Walk Havana and clear the fog yourself
FOG hides the world map and only gives back what you have walked. Havana is flat, gridded and built along a seawall, so the fog comes off in long confident strips.
Three cities in a row
Havana reads as three walkable pieces laid end to end along the water. Habana Vieja is the oldest, a compact colonial grid strung between four plazas: Plaza Vieja, Plaza de la Catedral, Plaza de Armas and Plaza de San Francisco. Calle Obispo runs through the middle of it as a pedestrian spine. The blocks are short, the streets are narrow, and you can clear most of the old town in a long morning.
West of that is Centro Habana, which is denser, louder and much less restored: a tight grid of tall thin buildings with the Paseo del Prado on its eastern edge. Keep going and you reach Vedado, a completely different proposition. Vedado is laid out on a rational grid where the streets running one way are numbered and the streets running the other way are lettered, so Calle 23, better known as La Rampa, crosses G, the Avenida de los Presidentes, and you always know exactly where you are.
The Malecon walk
The Malecon is the obvious first move and it deserves the reputation. It is a seawall road running roughly eight kilometres from the mouth of the harbour in Habana Vieja, along the front of Centro Habana, and on past Vedado. Walking it end to end draws one uninterrupted line on the map that ties all three districts together, and there is no better way to understand how the city is arranged.
Do it in the late afternoon. In winter, when a norther blows through, waves come clean over the wall and across the road, and the spray reaches the buildings opposite. Then turn inland at Calle 23 and walk up La Rampa into Vedado, past the Hotel Nacional on its little bluff, and you can finish at the Plaza de la Revolucion. That is a full afternoon and a serious amount of fog gone.
Why Vedado is the best part to fill
If you like a map that fills in properly, Vedado is the prize. The lettered and numbered grid means you can walk it methodically, up one street and down the next, and watch the fog come off in clean parallel bands. Very few cities let you be that systematic. Habana Vieja by contrast fills in as an irregular blob, because the colonial streets do not line up neatly and you will end up doubling back.
Havana is flat and at sea level, so distance is the only cost. The heat is the real constraint: it is hot and humid most of the year, and the middle of the day in summer is not walking weather. Shade is patchy in Centro and better under the arcades along the Prado and parts of Vedado, where big trees line the wider avenues.
What the app does and does not do
FOG is a fog of war walking map. The world starts hidden. Every street you physically walk is revealed permanently. Ranks climb with the area you have covered, from Wanderer through Scout, Pathfinder, Explorer and Voyager, and the app shows what percentage of any city you have walked you have lit up.
There is no account and no sign up, no cloud, no analytics, no ads and no tracking. What FOG records stays on the phone, and you can export it. Background exploring keeps revealing with the app closed and the screen off. It is free to explore, and one purchase of USD 5.99 unlocks unlimited ranks, every character and history import from Google Timeline exports and GPX files. No subscription, ever.
What it does not do: there are no Havana routes, no guides and no local content. It is the same map everywhere. Only the streets differ.
Questions people actually ask
Which part of Havana is most satisfying to clear?
Vedado. The lettered and numbered grid lets you walk up one street and down the next, so the fog comes off in clean parallel bands.
How long is the Malecon on foot?
Roughly eight kilometres of seawall from the harbour mouth past Centro Habana and along Vedado. It draws one continuous line across the city.
Is my map stored anywhere outside my phone?
No. There is no account and no cloud. The map never leaves the device, and you can export your data if you want a copy.
Does FOG include Havana guides?
No. No curated routes, no guides, no local partnerships. The fog of war map works the same way everywhere on Earth.
Start with a dark map.
FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.
free to explore · one purchase unlocks everything · never a subscription