Can you drink the water in Cuba?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is, it depends.

The general rule is that, if the water tastes ok and looks clean, then it is fine to drink. Sometimes if you are in a beach side community, the water will taste salty. The taste is not good. Obviously, I would not recommend drinking this water. The water is perfectly clean, but it just has a high salt content and would not be very tasty.

In Havana, I drink the water all the time. Throughout Cuba and Havana there are water treatment plants which do a good job of treating all the water. Furthermore, there are chlorination stations throughout Havana that ensure that water is disinfected throughout the city.

In any event, despite the fact that the tap water is perfectly safe, if you still have concerns, you can always simply buy bottled water in any Cuban supermarket at a very low cost. Water quality should never be used as an excuse to avoid visiting Cuba.

On occasion, as can happen in any city, a localized boil water advisement will be issued, usually due to construction work or a broken water main. This is rare and the advisement is issued usually as a precaution rather than a warning.

Interesting Note: There have, in the past, been a few, very limited, cholera outbreaks, usually affecting no more than half a dozen people, and always localized in the extremely poor outskirts of the far eastern provinces. These were proven to have been caused by poor sanitation within crowded living quarters rather than contaminated water sources. So, unless you anticipate sleeping on the floor of a crowded ghetto in a remote village located at the eastern tip of the island, you should have no worry at all about contracting cholera.