Hi! I am going to Havana with a friend next month- I saw Something Fishy's post suggesting Elvis as a tour guide for Vinales and emailed him, but his responses are very short, and it's been a week and I don't have much more info than when i started I inquired about a tour, and he replied simply "ok". Then I asked the price and was told 150CUC- unsure if that's for 2 or 1. Would you be so kind as to give a little more detail about Elvis and the tour? Did he meet you somewhere in Havana? Was he reliable? How did you stay in contact once you arrived in Cuba? Thanks so much!!
He's not a tour guide, he's a taxi driver who happens to know his way around Vinales. But he won't give you lectures about the history or whatnot, he'll just drive you to interesting spots. (In fact he was more interested in pointing out pretty ladies as we drove along, and couldn't for the life of him understand why we were taking pictures of the scenery instead
.)
150CUC sounds about right, we paid 120 but what with tourism exploding it makes sense that the price went up. We paid for his time and car, not per person.
We didn't need to be in contact with him. We met him on the street, struck up a conversation, and made up to meet at the same spot at a given time. I suggest you make up a time and place to meet and hope he shows up. This is Cuba, things are more fluid here...
We found Elvis reliable, great fun, and very good at dispensing bribes to keep his passengers out of jail. But that story will have to wait
.
ETA: Re. reliability - when we were done with Vinales we made up to have him take us to the airport at the end of our trip, but he never showed up. I don't know if that was a communication issue (maybe he came the wrong day?) or something else. So I wouldn't call him 100% reliable, I suppose...