Hurricane Oscar Turns Travel Dreams Into Nightmares in Cuba: Here’s What Tourists Need to Know.

Travelling to Cuba? Here’s how Hurricane Oscar and a power outage could ruin your trip.

Tropical storm Oscar made landfall as a hurricane on Sunday evening in Cuba, where residents were preparing for more chaos and misery as the country grapples with a nearly nationwide power outage in its third day.

The arrival of Oscar, after the Friday collapse of Cuba’s largest power plant crippled the whole national grid, piles pressure on a country already battling sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.

Cuba’s government said power would be restored to most of the country by Monday evening, with President Miguel Diaz-Canel warning his government would not tolerate public disturbances during the outage.

Oscar was a Category 1 storm when it made landfall in eastern Cuba at 5:50 pm local time (2150 GMT) on Sunday, the US National Hurricane Center said, before it weakened to become a tropical storm.

As of 11:00 pm local time, the storm was packing maximum sustained winds near 70 miles (110 kilometers) per hour, and it was expected to continue moving across eastern Cuba into Monday.

In Baracoa, waves reaching up to 13 feet (four meters) high hit the seafront. Roofs and the walls of houses were damaged, and electricity poles and trees felled, state television reported.

Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters Sunday that electricity would be restored for most Cubans by Monday night, adding that “the last customer may receive service by Tuesday.”

The power grid failed in a chain reaction Friday due to the unexpected shutdown of the biggest of the island’s eight decrepit coal-fired power plants, according to the head of electricity supply at the energy ministry, Lazaro Guerra.

National electric utility UNE said it had managed to generate a minimal amount of electricity to get power plants restarted on Friday night, but by Saturday morning it was experiencing what official news outlet Cubadebate called “a new, total disconnection of the electrical grid.”

Most neighborhoods in Havana remain dark, except for hotels and hospitals with emergency generators and the very few private homes with backup systems.

After three days of no power, “my fridge has defrosted and I’m afraid that everything will be spoiled,” said Adismary Cuza, a 56-year-old worker.

“Cubans are tired of so much,” added Serguei Castillo, 68.