Blogs from Oeste, Cuba, Central America Caribbean - page 9

Saturday 9thJanuary 2016 Today we had a free day to explore Havana and what’s more it was not raining! However before that we had to cope with waking up to a hotel without water. Apparently this happens quite often. Not too stressful and after breakfast it was back on. The Taylors and Woods decided to go their separate ways in the morning – not because we’ve squabbled but we wanted to do different things. This is a Wood take on the morning. First we visited the cathedral and went up the tower. Great views from the top but a bit tricky with crumbling masonry, not much protection at the edge and bare electrical wires everywhere. Outside the cathedral the enormous nativity scene was still there and a group of children sang Christmas carols (including jingle bells) ... read more

Friday 8th January 2016 We thought we had left the rain behind – not a bit of it. It rained and rained and we were soaked and where were the ponchos? - back at the hotel because John said it didn’t rain in Havana. One good thing about rain, it clears the streets so we had Havana to ourselves. Havana is beautiful, elegant, faded, dilapidated and we loved it. Our guide Rainier gave us a lot of information – too much really for brain-faded tourists. Coffee break was replaced by a mojito break and gladly, by the time we had had lunch the rain had cleared and it was time for a classic car tour of the city – one for the Taylors and one for the Woods. These old USA cars are kept working by ... read more

Day 1,2 Havana Arrived late Friday in dark. Unexpectedly easy through immigration but waited ages for luggage. Pickup driver (sister of apartment mgr) received me like a long lost friend with kisses on both cheeks. Drive to apartment was in '61 jeep, no doors or seatbelts & hang on for dear life. Poor lighting made for a grim outlook. Daylight brought a new outlook. Some trial and error diversions with the bus system & we managed to reach our target destination, the old town, a World Heritage Site. What a contrast. A vast grid of cobbled (often potholed) streets & plazas lined with predominantly colonial mansions, churches, housing & official buildings with conditions ranging from almost complete dereliction to beautiful renovation. All the while hundreds of huge old 50's & 60's era American Customline's, Chevy's, Plymouth's ... read more

Finally, this had been a trip in the making for nearly 2 years before i actually got to step foot on Cuban soil. The feeling that i was to travel to the Caribbean for the first time in my life had not hit me until the very last week of work before i was about to set myself on an educational and emotional two week adventure with G Adventures (Cuba Colonial tour). I had never travelled alone before, i must admit i did fear for the worst. Questions start clouding your head. What would happen if i got lost? Would i find it difficult to understand the Spanish language? What would i do if i got mugged? Where do i go if i was confused? What if i don't have a good groups of people who ... read more

Viñales: Up-close and personal The fields of green tobacco, almost obscuring the quaint farmhouses, were our first signals that we had entered Viñales. For hours we had pushed the little car and ourselves. We didn't stop for lunch choosing instead to gorge on the goodness of local fruits we had bought. It was mid-afternoon. Our passenger was a high-school baseball coach on his only day off, he had said. We had picked him up from the roadside a mile aback. He was very neatly attired and bespectacled and appeared non-threatening to us. He guided us through the final twists and corkscrew turns on the precipitous mountain road into town and straight down Salvador Cisneros street. Once there, we easily avoided his persistent and transparent attempts to hustle us into accommodation of his choosing and went, instead, ... read more