Its been a week of departures. It seems the press in the outside world were fixated with Castro’s retirement and the consequent “elections”. “Elections” in a loose sense of the word, in that we are not living in democracy. It is not the people really who chose their new president. They had to vote for the new representatives in parliament but they are all from the same party. It was no big surprise to anyone here that Raul got chosen as the new leader. And whereas the outside press seems to think that this signals a big change, the ppl here [View Full Entry]

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Random coincidence - Corinna (my flatmate in Centro Habana) and I share the same birthday. We chose to spend it, together with 2 other German friends (Tomas and Katerina) on la Isla de la Joventud (the isle of youth). Perhaps ironic now we r starting to feel old, or perhaps a hope that bathing in its sweet waters would bring us the secret of eternal youth! Compared to past experiences with the Cuban travel system, the journey was smooth, easy and cheap as we were able to take advantage of our Cuban student/residence carnets. We got there by ASTRO and then [View Full Entry]

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Aventuras en el Oriente Part 2: Baracoa We arrived to Baracoa by a combination two of my favourite modes of transport in Cuba: camión(truck) and luck. The crazy evangelist Jorge took us to the truck station and busybodied us on to the right one, waving us goodbye with a cry of “que Dios les acompañe!” (may God be with u) and a gesture of praying hands toward the sky….! Another of his classic moments. The truck to Guantanamo, (yes, where the US nanal base is, tho its apparently so hidden away that the telescope tourist trap isn’t really worth it) was [View Full Entry]

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So, on the eve of the 25th, when u folks in the UK were already asleep with bellies full of turkey and mince pies, we (Patricia, Corinna and I) set off on our adventure eastwards. We arrived in Camagüey rather disorientated after the 7 hr bus journey and went to the casa particular we had reserved. As soon as we got there we got our introduction to the way some “business” people try to squeeze every possible cent out of the tourists here. Unfortunately this became a theme for the early part of the trip.. we may be experienced at daily [View Full Entry]

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Happy Christmas! Feliz Navidad desde Cuba! Not that I have the slightest Christmassy feeling… today is xmas eve and its basicly like a normal day! We r pissed off coz we wanted to go to the beach but the weather (which has been glorious for the past few days) is shit! Also our Cuban mama, Lily, is doing a special meal tonight and my stomach has not been behaving itself for nearly a week now… grrrr! Here, most ppl celebrate Navidad in some form with their family, tho apparently they mostly do a meal - rice, beans, meat (probably pork) and [View Full Entry]

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So… after lots of false starts the Viñales adventure eventually takes place! Other adventurers joining the tenacious little English blonde: an equally tenacious German, (housemate of aforementioned blondie), suffering from a sore throat but determined not to let that stop the fun; another German who should be nicknamed “que lindo!!” for frequency of usage of said phrase, and completing the pack - the Denmarkian, único hombre who packed in such a rush he forgot toothbrush and anything warmer than a t-shirt. Viñales could be another country from Habana. Its is a small countryside town which benefits from the tourism which [View Full Entry]

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The European colonizers of South America wiped out entire indigenous populations with what we know in the UK as the “common cold”… well now it seems those ghosts of the Americas past are eventually getting their revenge on an innocent group of European students in La Habana. Almost everyone has had some kind of flu-stomach-fever virus… I wont go into too much detail but several of my friends have tested out the highly acclaimed Cuban health system… Corina was “lucky” in that she got to go to a private clinic (basically for tourists, in Miramar, the district where all the embassies [View Full Entry]

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Trinidad Road Trip Wow, what a weekend… its gonna be a mission to try to fit in all the stories but I’ll give it a shot. After much indecisiveness and guilt, I abandoned 2 sick friends, missed another friend’s (possible) afternoon birthday dancing outing, hopefully made it up 2 her by going out 4 peso pizza and getting her a cute prez, missing my 2nd yoga class in a row… I finally decided to go to TRINIDAD on another “excursión” which seemed ridiculously cheap with a group of other European students. (Not my usual lot, they were all very ill, hospitalised [View Full Entry]

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La Habana Journals 4 It seems the manaña attitude is seeping into my blog writing…sorry! Will try to fill in a little without writing a boring list of what I’ve done. Briefly ive been mostly… partying, drinking rum, going to the beach (in maquina - 50’s old American banger), queuing, eating ridiculously cheap ice-cream (and getting sick 1 time from it), hanging out with too many Germans and trying hard to socialize more with the Cubans! Of course, studying and doing cultural stuff 2… Monday was a shit day… I was so looking forward to taking advantage of not having classes… [View Full Entry]

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First experiences in La Universidad de Habana 05.09.07 Everything. Here. Happens. Very. Slowly. If it happens at all. It seems one of the favourite pastimes of the Cuban population is queuing… waiting… waiting… queuing.. and … waiting some more… and then actually… mañana. That’s what happened on Monday at uni - we went to enrol but we couldn’t do so until the next day because Magaly, in charge of foreign students, felt ill. Tuesday then, we went in again… I went to the first class that I was interested in - Estudios Afro-Caribeños - turns out the profe is away for [View Full Entry]

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