As usual, professional helpful staff
Michelle as fab as ever!
Please let the airline know that they need to improve the diabetic meals. It is not only sweet things that need to be reduced but also the amount of carbs.
It was all very good, the room, the meals, and the facilities, including the beach and the service there. We had a good discount for the pool out of action, which did not affect us greatly. The pick up at the airport was rather casual with an old vehicle, but the return was fine.
Great work Gordon and team.
Gordon Hibbert, as ever excellent service
The only slight issue we had was when we arrived in Barbados there didn’t appear to be the private transfer there for us …no one was holding a DialAFlight board up. We eventually got it sorted
We will be using you again.
Flights and hotel really good. Had to get a room upgrade at Sandpiper - but no extra charge.
Everything worked like clockwork. Your local rep was excellent
You always look after us very well
Always a brilliant service
Your service is outstanding and I will be using you again
As always DialAFlight delivered. Recommend to everyone - especially Curtis who knows EXACTLY what we want
Great help finding our holiday - excellent support to book what we wanted and follow through to ensure we were organised to travel
I loved the personal service and the phone call before my flight to make sure everything was OK. Brilliant
Holiday was wonderful but would not go back to Accra Beach Hotel. We were told to ask for upgrade when we got there, as we has stayed twice before, they did not oblige. The room had no balcony and was tired, needed upgrading.
As always can rely on DialAFlight for worry free travel arrangements.
Great hotel, location and the staff were very friendly
Would always trust you to make life easy.
Telephone calls answered swiftly. Staff members courteous and knowledgeable.
I have been using DialAFlight for a few years but had not been away since before the Pandemic. Just used the company again and the standards and customer care is still the same. Excellent!
Keep up the good work.
Had a great trip. Hotels were good standard. All arrangements went smoothly
It was my first time booking with DialAflight and it was a great experience. Thanks to the team for making sure I checked in and asking if I need any help. I will be definitely booking again
Julie Harris is very helpful and keeps in touch
Simple, easy professional. A pleasure to do business with.
Marshall put together the perfect holiday to St Lucia for us. Will definitely return to DialAFlight
Paul Jones provides an excellent service. I couldn’t ask for more.
The House has gone all inclusive which is a big change. But the property Is in need of updating. Sunbeds were a problem as with 100pc occupation there simply not enough. That apart it was a really good break and the all inclusive option certainly helped control the cost on what has become an expensive island.
The winds of change have blown strongly in Cuba in recent years, bringing heady days for both the country's creaking authorities and its 11 million inhabitants.
As this sort of modern revolution has ended its isolation from the rest of the western world, Cuba has become one of the most fascinating holiday destinations.
My Spanish wife Montserrat and I were determined to venture first beyond the capital, Havana, to see part of Cuba visited by those adventurous enough to endure a two-and-a-half hour journey, during which vast potholes and wandering chickens are just two hazards.
We were heading for Vinales, a small town in a national park 113 miles west of Havana, known for its limestone mogote hills that look like huge haystacks.
Nothing prepared me for this prehistoric landscape. I half expected a tyrannosaurus rex to come charging round the corner. Luckily, the only giant creature we en-countered was a hutia, a massive rodent so tame it happily nibbled on leaves we offered.
The Vinales region is a twitcher's delight, and we saw hummingbirds, mockingbirds and tiny Cuban todies, with their pink flanks and red throats singing a distinctive, soft call of 'pprreeee-pprreeee'.
We were staying in a red-roofed cabin at the state-owned Los Jazmines hotel. The cabin was made of concrete after its wooden predecessor was destroyed by Hurricane Gustav in 2008.
We were here to celebrate a significant birthday for Montserrat. But as she opened our cabin's curtains the next morning and saw the mist rising from the valley below, becoming 40 seemed a breeze.
We visited one of the tobacco fields that produce the crop for the finest cigars in the world. Winston Churchill favoured the Romeo y Julieta brand.
Leading grower Ivan Hernandez talked us through the process and showed us how to roll a perfect puro - not using the apocryphal method involving the thighs of a virgin.
Before President Kennedy imposed a trade embargo on Cuba in 1962, he is said to have asked an aide how long it would take Castro to cave in. 'One year,' the aide replied. 'Well then,' said JFK, 'I want 365 cigars to keep me going.'
Until the revolution, Cuba was a tropical playground for American gangsters. Al Capone had a holiday home in Varadero, which is where we went next – a 12-mile peninsula of sugary sand two hours' drive to the east of Havana.
There, we stayed at the all-inclusive Grand Memories hotel, full of friendly holidaymakers from Canada, which normalised relations with Cuba in the Seventies.
We hopped in a taxi to La Casa de Al, a restaurant in a villa that once belonged to Capone. The waiter made me an offer I couldn't refuse – of paella, Cuban-style. It was indifferent, but, given that this hoodlum hangout was decorated with photos of Capone and his henchmen, I didn't kick up a fuss.
Varadero's beaches are beautiful. We sunbathed, swam and danced to salsa until it was time to move on to Havana.
Hard-drinking novelist Ernest Hemingway became indelibly associated with Cuba. He is said to have sunk 12 mojitos in one hour at the tiny La Bodeguita del Medio bar, but we enjoyed just one or two, to the sounds of a Latin band, before moving on to Hotel Ambos Mundos.
Room 511 has been preserved as an atmospheric museum to the author, who lived there for seven years. It's complete with his typewriter and fishing rods.
For a taxi back to our hotel, what better than one of the 60,000 or so classic American cars that survive from before the embargo? Ours was a 1958 cherry-red Dodge Regent, whose driver, Carlos, was old enough to remember life before the revolution. 'People were so poor in the countryside,' he told us. 'Castro improved their lives.'
For 20 pesos (£14), he took us on an idiosyncratic tour of some of Havana's lesser-known attractions, including John Lennon Park, where an elderly lady is employed to give tourists a pair of metal-rimmed glasses to put on the bronze statue of the late Beatle. The government gave her the job after fans kept pinching the Lennon specs.
While Cuba has become more open, it seems determined not to lose its unique character.
'We're not going to have Cuba filled with McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken,' said our guide earnestly. 'We will never let that happen.'
However, as more and more free-spending Americans visit, the pressure to change could well prove overwhelming. All the more reason to go now.
First published in the Daily Mail - July 2019
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