Meet Daniel Víctor González

Cheyenne, Suzanne, Marcia

Written on 6 March, 2020

Daniel was amazing! He was very friendly, patient, and kept up great spirits on a very long drive. He knew where to stop when we needed bathroom and snacks breaks, and was kind and generous in all our interactions. He was very open to answering any and all questions we had about Cuba. He was even helpful before and after we drove with him, asking our flight number to make sure he was waiting for us at the airport at the correct time and helping us find places to exchange money, even when we were in a different city. We loved him so much we contacted him later in our trip to drive us again, and even though he was not available he connected us with his friend, who was wonderful as well. Would definitely recommend Daniel and you should try booking him for your entire trip if possible, we would have loved to have him as our only driver the entire time.

Marlene from United States

Written on 10 February, 2020

I contacted Victor the month prior to our trip to Cuba. I wanted to contract a car and driver for a 16-day non-touristy road trip "for the good of the cuban people" around the island (think 1955 US Route 66). We were two women traveling alone. We also brought two large suitcases full of school supplies, kitchen/bath products, and clothings/shoes for organizations in the rural communities to give to people that needed them - which Alex and Victor helped us deliver along the way.

I wanted to say one thing about the one negative review posted about Victor on this site. The first thing I asked in email was for his side of the story because we were also two women traveling alone and I wanted to make sure our trip was awesome. The woman that posted this review treated Alex and Victor like slaves - bossing them around, making impossible demands, and calling them names. Despite her continuous verbal abuse and anger, the guys completed the trip and remained professional. (I would have left her on the side of the road.) So ignore that review unless you are a princess or prima donna - at which point you should not be traveling around Cuba - go to Cayo Coco or an all-inclusive and get lost in the average. Our trip was not average in any way - Victor does everything in his power to make you happy and for us it was exceptional and enough in every way!

More about our trip: Victor is an excellent and prompt communicator which made the whole process so much easier. I had been emailing various car services and couldn't get anyone to respond or if they did it wasn't easy to communicate or they weren't flexible with where they would take us. Victor's customer service and business focus was very appreciated and we were able to start building a relationship via email which made me feel comfortable about booking with him.

I sent a concept of the itinerary which was ambitious - with Victor's recommencations, we adjusted some things out, and reoriented the direction of the trip. Here is the itinerary we planned and completed: we left Havana headed SE through Playa Largo, along the southern route to Cienfuegos then along the southern route to Trinidad, onward to Camaguay via Sancti Spiritus and Ciego de Avila, and then to Manzanillo via Las Tunas, then take the southern route to Santiago de Cuba, then onward to Baracoa via Guantanamo, then up around the northern route to Gibara, then drop down to Holguin and bust it out to Santa Maria in a long day, and then back to Havana, then the last day drop down the Western route to Soroa and Las Terrazas and back to Habana. Phew! (Plus we had 3 days in Habana on our own)

If you got all of that, our trip was flawless from start to finish because of Victor and his father-in-law Alex (who was our taxi driver in his nice 2002 Toyota sedan). Both men are exceedingly kind, friendly and polite and go above and beyond to make sure your trip in Cuba is the best it can be. Victor acted as guide, navigator, travel agent, and planner.

Questions that I had that may help you: neither men smoke, the car is clean and well maintained, four of us traveled comfortably and they were masters at fitting luggage and all our other treasures in the trunk! We are pretty independent and used to taking care of ourselves, so to be pampered by these two assisting us with luggage, buying tickets to events, or any other ideas I came up with was such a luxury. They truly spoiled us!

Things go wrong in life - they had a death in their immediately family the second day into our trip, Alex returned to Habana for several days and we had substitute drivers/taxis until he was able to join us in Trinidad - both of those drivers were also wonderful with nice vehicles. We were so impressed with Victor and Alex's professionalism and how concerned they were about not allowing the circumstances to impact our trip, yet, making the adjustments necessary to meet their needs also. There were several days where there was no fuel and we later found up they were up late into the night negotiating with officials to obtain fuel - again none of this impacted our travel or timelines.

You get to know people quite well when you spend substantial time together. Our personalities all meshed very well and we genuinely liked each other. When we weren't too tired from the day, we often all played dominoes or mexican train at night. Alex is a lethal opponent, although we are all pretty good!

We became friends, we shared lots of personal stories, we learned so much about Cuba, its people, how resourceful, hardworking, clean, organized, loving, caring and family-oriented the Cuban people are.

We stayed in many wonderful casa particulars and ate in dozens of delicious paladars as well. I am particular but also reasonable - we had no trouble finding nice accommodations or good food. We tried a little street food, bought produce at open markets, and bought roasted peanuts, coconut, sugar cane juice and other items from roadside stands along the way. We all took 1,000 pictures.

We had free time to walk, shop, visit sites within all the cities we traveled through, we saw things that no tourist would ever see (like farmers spreading their rice on side roads to dry and then sweeping up and load the rice into trucks by hand). We saw 10,000 goats, 2,000 mules, 7,000 brahma-ish looking cows, 100,000 cats (particularly in Havana), 4,000 dogs, at least 25,000 horses. We saw mountains, rivers, beaches, the ocean, farmlands, rice paddies, cities, towns, factories, private enterprises. We visited, private homes, gardens, bird-watched (we even saw the Cuban tocororo/trogan, zunzuncitos, emerald hummingbirds, and many others), snorkeled, laid on the beaches, many of which we had to ourselves. There are so many other things we did and saw! Too much to list in one review. Cuba was such a wonderful and fascinating country but SO MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE because of Victor and Alex.

We came home healthy, happy, and truly enriched from the time we spent with these guys, both of whom made our trip exceptional with their humor, kindness, and Cuban pride. In an imperfect world, Victor made it all perfect. We were exceedingly pleased in every way with our trip. Thank you Alex and Victor from the depth of our hearts for the million memories we all made together!

Philip and Kathryn Burke from Australia

Written on 26 January, 2020

5 STAR TRAVEL GUIDE
CAN’T GET BETTER ????
Victor was so professional in working out our itinerary of 11 days. He had a can do attitude and spoke excellent English. I felt at easy from our first conversation.
Phil and I had a fantastic time in Cuba as a direct result of Victor and Alex, the driver.
We feel so grateful for the amazing memories that Victor and Alex created in this beautiful country.
We encourage our American and Australian friends to experience Cuba with Victor and Alex because they took care of every detail and made a personalised holiday for us.
Every day they crafted interesting, exciting, and fun times. The very best tour guide we have ever had in traveling the world.
I truely felt so sad saying goodbye as they made us feel like family and created the best time for us in every way! ????
Thanks Victor for the memories in November 2019, we will always be grateful.??

Jorge Gonzalez from USA

Written on 4 January, 2020

Riding with Daniel was a great experience. Very knowledgeable of all the locations i needed to go to and was very helpful with advice on things that I needed when I arrived in Havana, Cuba. In the future I will be contacting Daniel for all my taxi needs.

Alistair and Veronika from GB

Written on 3 January, 2020

We had a great time in Cuba. We met Daniel and Alexis at the airport as we had arranged. We had planned several transfers for our trip which Daniel organised for us. We found their service to be very reliable and Alexis, who was our driver, was an excellent safe driver and also shared his knowledge of the beautiful country. Daniel was very quick to respond to any message and flexible in helping us with ad hoc requests in organising activities in Havana. We would certainly contact them again on our next trip.