Blogs from Oeste, Cuba, Central America Caribbean - page 40

After an amazing week at Maria la Gorda, Laurence and I made our way to the small town of Viñales. We were excited for a change in scenery and some time away from the beach and eagerly awaited some hiking and biking in the countryside. Viñales is a burgeoning tourist town with loads of places to stay and things to do. It is situated amongst impressive limestone formations called Mogotes which are supposedly some of the best rock climbing in the western hemisphere. We were dropped of at Casa Benito by our van driver who sugested this small and friendly place. There we met a lovely couple from Toronto, Ian and Elizabeth who we shared many evening conversations with. The atmosphere was relaxed to say the least and the pastoral setting of the town was ... read more

hhhhhmmmmmmm, now this is the Cuba we have been looking for. After taking a taxi from Trinidad to Piñar del Rio with a British couple, we spent the night in this small provincial capital waiting to transfer to Maria la Gorda the next morning. This town, Piñar del Rio seemed to be as close to reality in Cuba as we could get. Buildings were in varrying states of disrepair while 1950 chevy´s plied the streets alongside throngs of bicycles. People carried live chickens from coop to dinner table and lines formed for all sorts of regular civic activities. Hearing about the wonderful ice cream available at the state run ice cream parlour, Coppelia we decided to join the line of people and wait our turn for 10 cents a scoop ice cream. Waiting nearly an ... read more

Holy Smokes! Trying to re-cap a month in Cuba is like trying to describe a painting to someone over the phone, difficult at best but I´ll try. Couple of words must first be put out there that I thought about aften when thinking in Cuba, they are.... Incredible, amazing, wonderful, spectacular, frustrating, annoying, overwhelming, complicated, lower middle class, equal, unfair and expensive. These are just some words that provide a sense of the diversity of expereinces happening in Cuba and the richness of this country. While it was by no means an easy trip, although days at the beach with Mojitos did ease my pain, Cuba was an incredible experience that I would highly recommend to anyone even slightly considering a trip here. That said, here is some of our story over the last month. ... read more

So here we are in La Habana - its pretty cloudy and raining - not exactly what we expected! Got pissed on the plane watching Jackass and Borat and arrived 1.5 hours late due to mist in London! we were greeted by a massive queue at immigration and we somehow managed to be the last to go through - and then......there was a power failure and we were left searching for our bags in the dark!! Taxi ride to hotel was pretty spectacular - vintage cars and people, buildings, music, the smell of tobacco in the air - a million miles from Londres... Our plan was to go and explore the city but instead we fell asleep and woke up this morning completely confused.. Today we had breakfast on the roof overlooking the city - got ... read more

Hello! I Kuba fanns inget internet, sa det har ar forsta gangen vi har mojlighet att skriva pa bloggen. Vi ar nu i Honduras pa en o som heter Roatan. Kuba var en upplevelse. Nu ar det bevisat att kommunism inte fungerar. Vi hade last om hur det skulle vara i Kuba, men inte hade vi forstatt att det skulle vara som det var. Husen var utanpa i sa daligt skick i Havanna att det inte var klokt. Smutsiga och fula. Manniskor ids inte satta pengar pa sina hus, atminstane inte pa att fixa utsidan, eftersom det inte ar deras egendom och de ar radda att staten tar dem av dem om de ser bra ut. Nar vi blev dumpade av taxichaufforen pa gatan kvallen vi kom till Havanna visste vi nog inte alls vad vi ... read more