2/3rds Typical Price, Twice the Value. Check out our option loaded daily itinerary below.

Aproximately $2200 for 14 days.

Total Cost of Air return from Vancouver, Double Occupancy with all Breakfasts, and some Meals, without Travel Insurance is $2200 Can, less a $300 Canadian tax deductible charity donation per ticket that will fund continuing support of sustainable agriculural research activities in Canada and Cuba. Fully bilingual and proficient guides.

Coast Islands Conservancy chair Ron Pither is pleased to be the coordinator of this fascinating trip to Cuba.

Coast Islands Conservancy is a registered charity active in conservation and sustainable community development for over 20 years.

For more info call Ron 250-539-2034 or cell 539-0089, email rpither@gulfislands.com or check out www.varalaya.ca

• Urban & Peri-Urban Agriculture
• Countryside Agriculture
• Participatory Plant Breeding
• Apicultural, Fruiticultural, Pasturage and Forage Research
• Organic Certification
• Environmental Organizations

• Health & Education Systems
• Human Rights
• Food Security
• Countryside and Seashore life
• Educational TV & Video Production
• Havana Art Galleries, theatres, museums, monuments, palaces, and plazas.

March 6: Leave Vancouver Int. Airport 10:30pm (PST) for 5.5hr flight.

March 7:
- Arrive at Veradero Airport 8:20am Cuban Time (EST). Bus to Havana (~3 hours), check in early afternoon at Ambos Mundos, the elegant hotel that Ernest Hemmingway lived in from 1932-39, where his room is kept as a museum.
- Orientation meeting to overview the 2 week program, includes dinner, and we'll meet our Canadian guide, expat. Gregory Binikowsky, and Global Exchange’s resident guide in Cuba, American Missy Turner, and Cuban Humberto Rios from INCA.

March 8:
AM: Bicycle tour with Grand Caribe Bike Club of Havana, escorted by a WWII Jeep that has space for those wishing to follow us in style, or do an optional walking tour. Travel through Havana’s oldest neighborhoods to realize their historic, architectural, and cultural significance. Old Havana was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1982 and is acknowledged as the most authentic European settled Colonial city in the Americas. See the massive efforts to restore classic buildings and monuments by the City’s Historian, that attracts sustainable tourism, new investment, and is also mandated to improve social services for local residents. You’ll see neighborhoods and homes in stages of reconstruction and meet easily with their residents.
- Lunch reservations at La Mina restaurant in Old Havana
PM: Visit to La Maqueta. We will travel in the classic 50's 'Gran Cars'.
- Here at the Maqueta de la Ciudad is an impressive scale model of Havana run by non-governmental architects, urban planners, and sociologists who make recommendations to the city plan and implement future development of the capital, We’ll enjoy a unique overview of Havana’s history, present developmental challenges, and ongoing restoration projects.
- Free Evening in La Habana, arrange it yourself or with guide. Baseball? The Opera? Ballet? Dance? Clubs.....

March 9:
We visit CINED, a video and film training facility of the Cuban Ministry of Education that produces curriculum and is twinned with the Gulf Island Film & Television School. See what’s in the viewfinders there, and as we’re beside the Canadian Embassy in stylish Miramar we’ll set up to see perhaps a little slice of what Canadian tax dollars do abroad! The Terry Fox Run is huge in Cuba during this time and March 2005 celebrates 60 years of official Canadian-Cuban friendship when some gala events will be happening. Lunch nearby
PM: Visit the premier environmental organization of Cuba, the "Antonio Núñez Jiménez" Foundation for Nature and Humanity. From 5 regional centers, here in the capital we'll get a country wide view of their remarkable environmental works in Cuba, and also their projects in the Caribbean Basin & Latin America. Cuba has over 25% of its land mass legislated as strict environmental conservation areas, and some select areas there allow resident wildcrafting, artisanal harvesting and ecological cropping activities.

March 10:

Day trip east to San Jose de Las Lajas and the National Agricultural Sciences Institute facility (INCA). Click here for an article on the remarkable work transforming Cuban agriculture, by INCA’s Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) program and national coordinator Humberto Rios, who is one of our tours host/guides.

March 11:
- The group will travel westward into Pinar del Rio province into the beautiful mountains of Las Terrazas World Biosphere Reserve, as declared by the United Nations. Here in Cuba’s largest reforestation project millions of trees have been planted. The country leads Latin American reforestation with the only net forest gain in the past decade (1.3%). We’ll learn much about the project, with hikes through the area flora and fauna, enjoying a picnic lunch at the local river, swimming below jungle waterfalls etcetera!
- We stay at the Biosphere in the charming Mirador Hotel in San Diego de Los Banos.

March 12:
We descend for a day to farm communities around La Palma where INCA sustainable agricultural projects foster noteworthy community development synergies. Many Canadian partnerships here so expect warm welcomes!

March 13:
- Travel Eastward through 3 provinces stopping at Santa Clara enroute to visit the memorial to legendary revolutionary Che Guevera. Try pre-flight to see the Motorcycle Diaries of his early life before his time in Cuba. The last part of this days travel is through Sancti Spiritus province to our stay at Las Cuevas, in the historic downtown of the United Nations World Heritage City of Trinidad, on the Carribean Sea. Las Cuevas provides dinner throughout our three day stay, but you can always eat out.

March 14:
AM: Tour the historic museum city of Trinidad with its amazing display of well-preserved Spanish Colonial buildings, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. A great restoration process has been underway for most of the 80s and 90s. There are also a variety of museums, craft & art galleries to explore. The night music life is fantastic.
- Possible steam train ride through the sugar plantation valley above Trinidad or a vehicle tour. Visit to a ceramic production cooperative.

March 15:
Visit to Finca "La Caoba" which is a very progressive integrated agro-ecological EEFP co-op research farm for pasture and forage crops and animals and it works with INCA. A great farm fresh luncheon spread will be prepared for us.

March 16:
Leave Trinidad for the Playas del Estes 30 minutes East of Havana and check into Las Terrazas hotel near Santa Maria Beach. The whole area is lightly developed and retains its relaxed Cuban character. On the never crowded beach perfect for swimming you find excellent seafood, a 24 hour not American pizza hut, great live music, and more. A small town Guanabo, is a short bike ride or taxi away if you want to explore for the farmers market that sells fresh 6 days a week. Or just wander over the safe friendly countryside hills and meet people. Nearby is the centre where 5000 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown child victims have been cared for, for free by Cuba. Perhaps get lucky and see one of their periodic music concerts or art shows.
Your room has a kitchen for the next 4 nights. Forget the satellite TV there and dial in daily dance lessons poolside or Spanish lecciones. Try some Cuban cooking lessons

March 17:
Free Day to relax at the pool or beach or go easily into Havana.
We’ll arrange to visit at this time the UBPC Organiponico in Alamar, 15 miles east of old Havana. One of the most successful urban organic farms in Cuba selling ornamental plants, medicinal plants, and millions of vegetable transplants to surrounding residents and farmers. Provides training and fresh food for the area. This is a must see for anyone interested in Cuba’s Urban Agriculture, and Food Security.

March 18:
-Day trip south to San Antonio de Los Banos
AM: Visit to Gilberto Leon CPA Co-op farm that since 1993 has been an integrated research farm associated with the UN Lighthouse ‘Beacon Farm' program, and also works with INCA.
- Afternoon visit to the International Film School
- Evening meal, drinks included and we'll enjoy Cuban music and dance with Dulce Maria, a Havana salsa band, at the spectacular rooftop terrace of the Ambos Mundos hotel. We'll get an overview of Cuban music genres and dance forms from rumba to salsa to Cuban folk rhythms. Interact with invited Cuban guests while learning about Cuba’s diverse dance styles. Late night charter bus back to the beach hotel.

March 19: A free day to bus, car, bike walk swim etcetera around Santa Maria Beach. We’ll have organized with you more galleries, monuments, museums, markets, tours of clinics, schools, gardens, institutes, etcetera, depending on flavour preferences of the group. You can always bus/taxi/bike around or rent a car and head for Havana (30 minutes by car).

March 20: Free Day. Throughout tour, we'll visit or meet people and centers of interest re: Organic Certification, Human/Social/Economic Rights, Food Security. Our visits to some schools and clinics will show us Cuba's proud Health and Education Systems. This may be a day to revisit your special interests, or just play on the beach. Or the coordinators will likely schedule something. It will be a time to wrap up the trip and see what sewn seeds will reap.

March 21: Morning Departure from Veradero International Airport 10am