I’m a history buff, so Cuba has always been on my list of places to visit. We also like to cruise, so we felt the opportunity to visit via a cruise was the perfect way to overcome the difficulty of trying to plan a trip to a country without internet or reliable email systems. We could focus all our time there on the destination instead of worrying about hotels, transportation, and tours. We’re hoping the recent reversal of travel restrictions will not prevent these cruises to continue because we had a wonderful experience and hope others will have the opportunity to visit Cuba and meet the people there. We booked our cruise through Costco travel and our shore excursions through their service Shore Excursion Group. This was the second cruise we booked through Costco and highly recommend them as well as Shore Excursion Group. More about our shore excursions below.

The Ship: The NCL Sky is an older vessel that was once used by the cruise line for its Hawaii cruises in a prior life. It was nice that they left some of the original Hawaiian themed decorative details like the murals in the stairways and the tapa wall paper and Koa wood in the Outrigger bar (which has a great panoramic view over the bow). Having grown up in Hawaii, I found this quite nice. In spite of its age, Sky still is in very good shape. We had a balcony cabin towards the back of the ship, close to the aft elevator bank and stairway on deck 10. We didn’t pick it for any particular reason, but it turned out to be very convenient since it was one deck below the buffet and pool on deck 11. Our cabin attendant was great. He was very friendly and had our cabin cleaned on time without fail. The common areas, such as the pools, bars and dining rooms (including the buffet) appeared to be sized correctly for the number of passengers. The only issue we had was that even after we told them we would be fine with sharing a table, the folks at the reservation desk in the dining room seemed reluctant to have us share a table with other passengers. As a result, we had to wait for a table when there were clearly open seats at many tables. Of the three nights we ate dinner in the dining room, we only shared a table once and it was a lovely experience. The one feature we really liked on this cruise was that all the beverages, alcoholic and non-alcoholic were included in the fare. It was definitely nice not getting that bill for cocktails, wine and beer left on your door on the final morning of the cruise. According to the Costco agent, the Sky is NCL’s only ship that has this feature on its Cuba and Caribbean cruises.

Passport Control in Cuba: Prior to the trip, I was a bit concerned about making our 9am walking tour excursion as we were scheduled to dock at 7am and begin disembarkation at 8am. One of the reviews of an earlier Cuba cruise indicated it took them to 9:15am to get off the ship. I called the Shore Excursion people and they assured me that there would be no problem making the tour. NCL lets the passengers taking NCL shore excursions off first. If you are taking a non-NCL shore excursion (NCL calls these folks “independents”) make sure you pick up a numbered disembarkation pass the first morning on shore in the Outrigger lounge. They begin handing them out at 7am. I got there around 6:30 and ended up being around the fourth or fifth in line. You won’t need to do this after the first time off the ship. The actual disembarkation went a lot smoother than I had expected. The Cuban authorities processing you through visa and passport clearance are very well organized and efficient. There were multiple stations processing windows open and it was literally faster than going through any US passport control we’ve been through. I suspect the reports from earlier cruises about the processing time being longer was due to the Cuban authorities just getting up to speed. Once they process your visa and stamp your passport on that first time through, you can return to the ship and get off again with no real delays as many times as you want, just make sure you have your passport open for them to check. Once you are through passport control, the currency exchange windows will be straight ahead of you at the end of the terminal. You can’t miss them since you have to go right by them to exit the terminal. We were off the ship, through passport control and exchanged our money by 8:30am. It looked like all the shore excursion groups were meeting where we met our group, in San Francisco plaza directly across the street from the cruise terminal. Read more