Visited Cuba 3 times in the last decade. Most recent development is/has been geared to the tourism industry. Straying from this area is much like the DR or other countries in the area where life is more challenging.
Very safe country if you don't act like an ass,
I visited it about 15 yrs ago, against the advice of family who had gone there 10 yrs earlier. They said I'd be in a resort with fences and not allowed out.
They were wrong !
I stayed at a resort near the South end, it was in a National Park, we walked miles along the road seeing the occasional local, to another resort that catered to the European folks.
It was all very safe, and I don't even speak Spanish.
I took a black market (unofficial) tour via one of the resort workers who was pretty critical of the gov't, so we toured past Mr Bacardi's home (now a preschool). We ate at some local "illegal" restaurant, very cheap for lobster lunch.
The weird part was the lack of traffic on the roads, as the roads have the capacity for much more traffic than exists. I'm talking about seeing in the city of Santiago downtown, and I could see in the multi-lane road 6-10 cars total.
They were inventive with transportation: 1950's cars, flatbed trucks as bus, donkey carts, bikes, all mixed especially near the farmers market.
People were poor, but nobody except 1 gov't guard worker begged for money, I said no to her.
I rarely saw army or police in the week I was there, in fact when I returned to the West I was amazed at how many police we had around.
Funny thing is while at the resort a local offered to take me to see Gitmo, as though seeing American's was novel or something.
I would return again, except for US restrictions not allowing Americans to visit there. The Cuban's welcomed all American tourists.
They had this weird communist thing at the airport, they had a lady hand you a strip off the roll of toilet paper as you went in. Everyone could/had to work even if it was basically useless work.
I often wondered what you would do if you needed a second strip
