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Published: June 30th 2008
This intrepid traveller is back on the road and the latest destination was...Cuba! I have to admit I went knowing practically nothing about Cuba except that it is in the Caribbean and the USA doesn´t much like it. Well you can say that again!
I wanted to go for the "culture" something of which the Lonely Planet speaks highly of. I have come to realise that when the Lonely Planet bigs up a place for the "culture" that means there´s nothing there. La Habana is, or was, a very beautiful city. The buildings are amazing, but it has the feeling of a very overgrown village, with no shops and practically no amenities. I actually hadn´t realised there are countries in the world which still impliment rationing! The few shops there are sell little apart from second hand clothes, books, pasta, peanut butter and tomato sauce. I´m STILL hungry!!!!!!
Life there really is unbelievably hard! Cuban´s are forbidden from speaking to tourists but they still do as they desperately want someone to fall in love with them and marry them so they can leave. Apart from the lack of food getting around is pretty difficult (someone told me that´s because
Cuban´s aren´t really supposed to move around within the island), communication is nigh on impossible, they have the best literacy rate in the world and the majority of people have university education, BUT a lawyer earns $30CUC (thats 15 pounds!!!) a MONTH so the majority of people earn more working for tips in cafes or driving taxis.
Speaking of taxis...when we arrived at the airport Ed and I got a taxi to a very specific address that the driver insisted he knew and then he KIDNAPPED us!!!! He took us to an address which most definately wasn´t the one recommended to Ed by his parents´friends and an old heavily pregnant woman with a quite spectacular patch of beard on her face tried to convince ud the area was bad and smelt and we´d be so much better off staying in a house she knew...oh I was mad!!!!! So after a while of her not letting Ed leave her clutches I insisted the driver take us to an address from the Lonely Planet and nowhere else. And from then onwards all was well!
What Cuba does have in abundance is rum, cigars and a near religion of Che Guevara!
We went on a tour to a cigar factory in a really beautiful old building right in the centre of Habana to see the cigars in action and I bought a souvenir to take home! I have finally come to realise that the smell of rotting barrister in dad´s chambers is in fact pretty similar to cigars...hmm strange coincidense!
Having exhausted the "culture" in la Habana we checked out the beach about 20 minutes away which was oh so looooooooooooovely! It was just like the front cover of a tourist brochure and the sea was really clear and warm yey! To be fair we did quite a bit of beaching around!
We decided to get the bus to Trinidad on the south coast of the island, which was a lot smaller and chilled out than Habana, we went to the beach a few more times and then decided to go to a waterfall closeby. Ed and I were walking down the street when a bit of a cowboy approached us and started selling his horse rides to the waterfalls showing us a laminated business card to insist it was all legal and above board(?) So we decided to
take our lives in our hands and were handed over to a crazy younger cowboy (who rode along saying our names repeatedly, and linda linda linda (fit fit fit!) and making strange squealing sounds) and several scrawny horses.
I was so scared of falling to my death and being trampled at first but after the first 2 or 3 hours I really started to enjoy it! And I was the only one experiences enough to teach Ed the benefits of RISING trot...haha! About 20 minutes before the waterfall we stopped at a house, more of a hut really with pigs and chickens and huge cows in the garden and were given some freshly squeezed sugar cane drink. We were serenaded (quite embarassingly at first) by the family on various instruments and then Ed persuaded one of them to cut his hair with the antique kitchen scissors and half a mirror we´d just seen him use to cut someone elses. Peinado Cuban style!
Angie´s brithday was on Saturday, we trekked the 6 hours back to La Habana and went back to the beach there. Finding a house was really hard and when we did find one of them for
5 of us a woman from one of the other houses we´d stopped by to enquire at came by and insisted one of us stayed with her and that they should pay $20, rather than $10 we were paying in the second house, so Ed was kidnapped again!
Owing to a distinct lack of cash (not money - the cash machines are not very friendly there...) we celebrated the great day with an evening on the beach with a bottle of rum (or 2) and went swimming in the sea muy bien temprano. It was really nice until some creature of the sea took offence to us and whipped us with its long tentacle. Or something! Ouch. Ed sloped back to the house he had been forced to stay in at about 4 then got confused and came back to our house for breakfast at 6 thinking it was 9...whoops!
So thats about it for Cuba! I arrived back in lovely lovely Mexico which is all shiny and nice and has things like ATMs, telephones that call out of the country, internet access and ADVERTS(!!!!!!!) in place of Nazi style propaganda. Although Cuba did give us one last
kick to our depleted stock of cuban convertable $s on our way out when the airport demanded a departure tax paid in cash, I mean who does that?! Why didnt they just add it to the ticket price like all normal airlines! Grr.
I would like to say I did have a nice time, despite all the moaning and whining, and that I very much like the cars there. They are very cool. Although they do speak a stupid kind of spanish that I just CANT understand!! But I FINALLY got a stamp in my passport from the nice lady at immigration in Mexico city! (Woo! I think the lady thought we were a bit gone in the head when we asked specifically for them, aged 19 and 20!)
Tomorrow I am off to Chiapas as long as all goes well with Sambo and should get there sometime late on Wednesday.
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Daddy
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Missed you
Well! About time too. We have been very worried about the everyday story of Mexican and Cuban folk. What a relief to know all is as it was.. although no mention of the poorly foot in this blog unlike the face book entry. Hope you are bothe well. The Sheraton has been booke dand paid for for the night of the 24th . Enjoy! Love DAddy xxx