Santiago De Cuba

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This is the 2nd biggest city in Cuba.

We had a long travel day to get here - about 8 hours. But 6 of us being on a private bus with 30 seats, it wasn´t too bad a ride. Well, apart from the roads... lots of shakin´going on.

It´s also a lot hotter here. The city is surrounded by mountains so the weather basically gets trapped here. Very humid.

Once we all settled into our guest houses and had dinner we met up for a walk into the city centre. Our guide told us that this place had seen some people robbed - walking alone at 3.00am, but it should be relatively safe. That theory got put to the test when some guy we had passed just sitting quietly on a footstep (which they all do here), jumped up and tried to grab our guide´s hat. At this point I should let you know that our guide, Jubal, is around 6 foot four or five and skinny skinny skinny... painfully thin actually. He seems to get a lot of attention for some reason... perhaps he just stands out more than the rest of us. Nothing happened. They guy didn´t get the hat. But it did shake us up. From then on, every character we saw seemed dodgy and every look or glance from someone was suspicious.

We went to a hotel in town and sat at the rooftop bar and enjoyed the view and slight breeze. It was most pleasant.

The city is known for its music... everywhere you go you either see, or at least hear, Cuban tunes being played. I believe tonight we´ll be going to one of most popular venues in town.

We are supposed to be in Santiago de Cuba for 3 nights, but there is a hurricane on our tail, so we may only stay 2 nights. After walking around town all morning, I´m happy to leave this place. There´s not that much to see. It´s very crowded and quite poluted. We´ll probably go off to see a terrific cemetery this afternoon and head out tomorrow to the next town that I can´t remember the name of.

So, yes we are aware there is a hurricane and we are watching it carefully. I think it is only meant to hit the centre of Cuba and we are on the east coast, so it´s not a real threat. However, the tour company do have procedures in place to get us out of here should the need arise. Good to know.

We had met up with the rest of the crew the same day I wrote the above update. We all agreed. We wanted to leave the next day and not stay for 3 as planned. But, things just don't always happen the way we want, right.

It seems when the word 'cyclone' is used (here they say cyclone like we do instead of hurricane), everyone jumps at the chance to have some time off. Our driver, William, said he was unable to drive us out of town the next day because they aren't allowed to drive busses when there is a cyclone warning (even though the warning was for the next day, not the day we wanted to leave). So that meant we would have to stay the full 3 days. Deciding to do some sight seeing as a result, Jubal, our tour leader, arranged for a taxi minibus to take us to a museum just outside of town. We got there and couldn't go in. They said it was closed because of the cyclone. Then we headed for a big and gorgeous cemetery that has all these interesting historical people in it. A highlight there was to see the changing of the guard at the cemetery. The guards said that they weren't going to do that - because of the cyclone. Back in town, the streets had emptied. Why? Because of the cyclone. We wanted to go see some local music at a popular venue that night. It was closed. The cyclone. At this time, I should point out that there was no cyclone. All we had was some overnight rain. Not heavy. No wind. No floods. Just a normal rainy night. Just showers actually... We spent the evening on a terrace of a hotel bar that had fantastic music and drank Ron Collins and Mojitos. It was one of the best nights we'd had. All thanks to the cyclone that wasn't.

The following day everything was still shut down and quiet, despite the sun being out. So we just spent the day doing absolutely nothing. Laying around reading, playing cards and sleeping.

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