My husband and I arrived home this past Monday from a stellar vacation!! We've both been to Dominican, him to Jamaica, and myself to the Bahama's. We both agree that the Cuba itself, and Breezes Jibacoa are the friendliest, safest, most hassle free places we've visited. We attended weddings in Dominican, and Jamaica, which were also at fabulous resorts, but we found the atmosphere in Cuba was second to none! The resort had everything you could ask for, we had a beautiful ocean view room, and the staff was amazing. After being at a mega-resort before where you had to choose between 5 buffets and 5 a la cartes, not to mention try to find them, Jibacoa was very refreshing. It is large enough that you can get some exercise walking from the lobby to the beach to the pool, without getting lost!, and it was nice just knowing there is only 1 buffet, with plenty of food and variety for everyone. The Italian restaurant was amazing, and the Cuban restaurant was good too.
I can't say enough how safe we felt. I was expecting to see soldiers and police and guns everywhere as it is a communist country, but we didn't at all. Our bus got pulled over both times we were being transfered to an from the airport, I'm not sure why, the police pulled us over with flags and whistles, and it was literally less than 30 seconds before we were on our way again.
Not many people have cars or drive in Cuba, so everyone hitchhikes. You won't even travel a mile without seeing hitchhikers. People pick others up all the time, it's very safe, because it's just the way it is there.
We were approached by several staffers at the resort about how they have friends who will take you to Havana for half the price of going on a bus through the tour company. We took one up on it, and a couple who spoke very good english took us and showed us everything you would see on the tour, and explained all the history and everything. I highly recommend doing this as if there is somewhere, or something you are really interested in you can take your time, or if there is something less interesting, you can move on. They even took us to the home of a friend, so we actually got to be inside a house and see how the Cuban people really live. Havana was awesome!
We also went on the Catamaran trip to Cayo Blanco, a deserted island, with a gorgeous beach, and beautiful clear shallow water. It was also wonderful.
Now to the low points of our trip, ZERO of which have to do with Breezes Jibacoa or Cuba itself.
We arrived shortly after Tropical Storm Noel passed by which stirred things up in the ocean, and sent an army of Jellyfish to the shores of Breezes Jibacoa......so we had red flag almost everyday! This was unfortunate, but the gorgeous pool was a very satisfactory substitute for swimming, and we still lounged on the beach and worked on our tans! Our last day was a yellow flag, so we were able to go kayaking which was awesome, and I also swam in the ocean for a bit. I in all my infinite wisdom also accidentally formatted the memory card on our camera on Day 5 of 7! Also unfortunate. Hint-Format= DELETE EVERYTHING!!! I would like to take this opportunity to thank CANON for the "Are you sure you want to erase every picture you've taken?" warning that does not exist. HA HA!
I only included these last few comments to show, that a vacation is like a wedding, not every single thing is going to be perfect, somethings going to happen that you will laugh about. Maybe not right away. ( I did cry like a baby in the LOBBY in front of like 15 people when I realized I deleted all our pics!) But I'm over it already, I did my darndest to take a lot more great pics before we had to leave. And my husband assures me we'll go back. Would I stay at the same resort again? Definitely. And most likely, I will be able to do many of the things we couldn't or didn't have time for this time. You can't do everything in a week.
Breezes Jibacoa rocks!

A really wonderful holiday, good food, friendly helpful staff, excellent entertainment team. Will definatly come back here again. Rooms and hotel overall very clean, a relaxing enjoyable holiday.

My partner and I have just come back from a week at Breezes Jibacoa and had a great time there.

We travelled with Virgin and had three days in Havana first, which I would really recommend. We arrived in the morning and had a very smooth check-in - we were lucky a room was available at that time, as check-in is usually at 3 pm.

Our room - 2131 - was a garden view one overlooking the wedding gazebo. We were very happy with our room; always kept clean and tidy (as everywhere else in the resort) and a good distance from the (noisy in our opinion) pool area. The room was standard with no extra features, but it had everything necessary we felt.

The staff were all very friendly and we didn't tip, but left lots of presents instead.

There are a lot of reviews recommending you bring a thermo mug, but I really don't think it's necessary - do you really need a pint or more of mojito?! You can visit the bars as often as you like and at least it provides a bit of exercise walking back and forth...

We only had dinner at the buffet restaurant and found it was just fine. You will definitely never go hungry! There was quite a lot of choice and especially the deserts for both lunch and dinner were impressive. We had lunch at the beach bar a couple of times, where you can have burger, fish, chicken, hot dog, pizza, chips and fruit salad, and that was fine as well. It's not the best food I've ever had, but definitely not the worst either. To be honest I was expecting the food to be quite horrible given that it's Cuba, but we found that it wasn't the case.

Unfortunately, we only had one morning with a yellow flag on the beach and the rest were red due to the aftermath of Noel, which meant that we never went snorkelling, which we would have really liked. The pool was a fine substitute to the beach, though and there were always plenty of loungers available.

All in all, we have absolutely no complaints about this resort and would recommend it to anyone.

With the encouragement of trip-advisor my partner and I booked to go to Breezes Jibacoa for two weeks in November.
One of the reasons we chose it over the resorts at Varadero because our Virgin flight came into Havana and the transfer time was half that of the transfer time to Varadero. After a 9 and a half hour flight the coach transfer was an agony - I am sure our coach driver was passed a couple of times by bikes because it took about a hour and 45 mins rather than the hour or so quoted by others! Nevertheless when we arrived at the resort we were welcomed by the staff and after the usual form completion headed to our room. We had a great room that overlooked the theatre area so in the evening if we wanted to we could sit on our balcony to watch (a bit like being in a box at the theatre!). The room number was 2155 if this is of interest to anyone.
When we met the travel rep in the morning we were told that there was bad weather due (Hurricane Noel was heading for Cuba!). This caused some pretty high winds whilst we where there and it really did mean that Breezes lived up to its name! This didn't bother us as it provided a cool breeze which also helped keep the flies and mossies at bay.
The resort at the time was occupied by about 450 people made up of about 60% Canadian 30% British and 10% the rest of the world. From an English speaking point of view this made the resort very welcoming. We made some great friends whilst we were there both Canadian and British. The Canadians are great sports in every sense of the word - they love to compete in all of the competitions but do so in a fun way.
The staff everywhere were friendly and polite and helpful - we did do some tipping here and there but didn't feel we were oblidged to. The service didn't vary whether we did or didn't.
As suggested we took some items out to give away and these were mainly left in the room for the maid although we did find out that the gifts are centrally pooled and then divided amongst all the staff to make sure everyone gets a fair share - a true communist approach! We did the hike one morning and I took some items with me knowing we would meet some of the local inhabitants. Again they were so friendly despite us walking all over there land! I gave a colouring book and felt tip pens to a little girl that was there and to see her delight was well worth the experience.
A lot has been written about the food at the resort however all I can say is that I never went hungry. The "egg man" as I called him made super omlettes (4 at a time!) for breakfast and they we fresh and tasty - I've missed them since arriving back home!
The buffet has lots to choose from and I also found something I liked. I particularly liked the Mexican theme evening (Wednesdays) in the buffet. We only ate al a carte at Martinos whilst but did that three times because we liked it some much. The steak they do is superb without any fat at all.
One thing we did do, thanks to trip advisor, was to take thermos mugs - what a blessing that was! They keep you drink cool and fly free whether you are around the pool or beside the sea. If you are going and haven't got them - buy them before you go!
We did two excursions - one was the day trip to Havana - well worth the 51 CUCs (about £28) each. Lunch was included so I thought it excellent value for money. The other excusion was swimming with dolphins - an experience I had never had before and will be one of my fond memories of the holiday. They are delightful creatures and you only wise you could talk to them in some way to understand what is going through their minds. The trip was expensive in the end - 89CUCs each plus 90CUCs for the taxi there and back plus about 90CUCs to buy photos, DVD, lunch and souvenier nick nacks. All in all the day cost about 360CUCS (about £200). It was expensive but if you haven't done it well worth the money.
Our one big disappointment of the holiday was that due to the higher wind than normal the sea was closed on most of the days we were there. This meant that we couldn't snorkel much as planned which was one of the things we were looking forward to doing. What little swimming we did in the sea we could see how brilliant it would have been if the sea had been calmer. Never mind - a good reason to return one day I guess!