I’m a freelance travel writer, editor and photographer, and a Cubaphile and Cuba travel expert.
I write about Cuba for the international press and contribute to several travel guides to the island. My latest Cuba guide is Frommer’s EasyGuide to Cuba.
I also work as a consultant, translator, tour leader and guide in Cuba.
I was recently awarded a 2017 prize by the Latin American Travel Association for best online travel blog post about the live burial of a man in Cuba for The Holiday Place.
Over the last 15 years I’ve also become a Guatemala, Laos and Vietnam travel expert, and I’ve happily got lost in the imperial cities of Morocco for several publishers. The 4th edition of the Time Out Marrakech guide, which I edited and wrote for, was published in September 2014.
I write and photograph for magazines, newspapers, guidebooks, and online media, and I’ve edited more than 30 country, regional and city guides for UK publishers.
My most recent articles on Cuba include taking the Hershey train along the north coast of Cuba for Guardian Travel, exploring the caverns, culinary scene and cinema of Gibara for Telegraph Travel, 24 Hours in Havana for American Express, Following in the footsteps of Fidel Castro: 10 must visit sights in Cuba for Telegraph Travel, and Havana Rising for Millennia Magazine. My most recent articles on Vietnam and Laos include kayaking the world’s largest active river cave for Wanderlust magazine, and a Luang Prabang 3-day holiday itinerary for Guardian Travel.
I spoke about Cuba and answered questions at the Royal Geographical Society in London in October 2014 during its Discovering Cuba evening. I’ve appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage talking to presenter John McCarthy about travel in Cuba and on Simon Calder’s LBC Travel Show travel show talking about Hanoi during its 1000th birthday celebrations in 2010. In February 2016, I appeared on US radio, NPR’s OnPoint with Tom Ashbrook talking about travel to Cuba.
In 2013, I started working in Cuba with Smithsonian Journeys which offers legal People-to-People tours for US travellers to the island nation. Since then, I have worked with National Geographic Expeditions, the Environmental Defense Fund, board members of the National Geographic Society, and the New York Times Journeys programmes to Cuba. I also began work with the UK’s Political Tours in Cuba in 2016.
An exhibition (Cuban Stories) of some of my photographs was held at Casa, Floridita, London.
The images were also exhibited at Rich Mix. The Guardian profiles these images at: www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/feb/04/cuba-photography-exhibition-rich-mix
My photo commissions can be found here.
I started my writing life as a qualified NCTJ journalist in Kent and London before the lure (school geography lessons, plus Redmond O’Hanlon’s travels) of South America saw me backpack from the glacial tail of Chile to the steamy tip of Colombia. After a run-in with a piranha in Bolivia, becoming trapped in a sea lion flash mob in the Galápagos, and a sand boarding accident in Peru, I was hooked.
I moved to Barcelona to learn Spanish before becoming fluent in the Peruvian Amazon where I volunteered for two months to capture snakes, frogs and lizards for a rainforest charity project. A flesh-eating tropical disease, followed by a stay at the unit for people under the influence of foreign critters at University College Hospital in London, only strengthened my resolve to return to Latin America.
Inspired by a friend’s tale of hearing Elton John’s eulogy Candle in the Wind set to reggae in the barrios of Cuba, and the knowledge that Pope John Paul II had requested Fidel Castro reintroduce Christmas Day as a public holiday, I left for the Caribbean.
I arrived in Havana a few days before Christmas 1998 with a Mum-made Christmas cake. Cuban customs insisted the cake went through X-ray, quizzed me about its cultural connotations and gasped at its monster weight. I’ve been returning to Cuba ever since.
Follow me on twitter @claireboobbyer and Instagram @claireboobbyer
