Blogs from Cuba, Central America Caribbean - page 51

As I’m publishing this once I leave Cuba I’m telling the story as it happened day by day. Pretend each day is a new post. I also had the great idea of writing a day by day account on Wednesday so apologies for the not so informative accounts of Monday and Tuesday. Monday: So I somehow got up on time, got a taxi to the bus station that goes to Panama and bought a ticket for when I get back then managed to find the terminal for public bus to the airport and made my flight with plenty of time to spare. Flight to Havana was great. Had 3 seats to myself and just lay there watching stuff on my laptop. Minus the few episodes of turbulence was all good. My fear of flying is slowly ... read more

The sun was setting as we touched down in Havana. A long tedious immigration line awaited us and when we finally retrieved our bags Ash's pockets had been rifled through though nothing had been taken. Welcome to Cuba! Interestingly and per Cuban immigration policy our passports weren’t stamped, as we understand that this may cause issues visiting the States at a later date. Despite being accosted by loads of taxi drivers at the airport we managed to get into an official one and were advised a relatively decent fare to our hotel. Our 30 minute cab ride was in the dark and disappointingly the car we were in was modern but we did see plenty of old cars on the road as well as old trucks and bizarre looking old buses type things. The iconic Hotel ... read more

PHOTOS ! ! ! I think, at this Picassa link: You may have to copy and paste to your internet browser(Explorer , Safari, or whatever) https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos?q=picasa&hl=en&rlz=1R2ACAW_enCA350&biw=1024&bih=480&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&wrapid=tlif132666331259310&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wq#photos/109724096736643982140/albums Well Wednesday morning and another nice buffet breakfast in the sunshine on the patio. It really is quite nice. Anyhow, today was our first day on our own so to speak after our “orientation” tour of Old Havana with our guide Anna Lise yesterday. Before we ventured out on our own though we had another orientation to attend with the tour operator. Basically it was an hour to tell us our transfer to the airport in Veraderro was 5 hours before the scheduled departure of the return flight on Monday. So that means our return trip will begin at 2:30A... read more

The adventure began, or was supposed to begin Sunday night at 9:30 PM. About noon on Sunday I checked online to confirm the flight and found departure had been delayed 20 minutes. No big deal until later in the afternoon I checked again and found that the 20 minutes had grown to about 2 hours and we were now scheduled to depart at 11:50PM. But that was still a Sunday departure. We finally ended up being scheduled to depart at 1:40AM, Monday morning, and actually were boarded and moving from the terminal at 1:40AM. The beginnings of this Cuba adventure had begun to remind me of another adventure about 2005 when Robb and I were leaving, or trying to leave, from Glasgow with Canadian Affair. And tonite, after leaving the terminal building we didn’t get far. ... read more

My second time in this Caribbean island! What can I say, sometimes I love it here and sometimes I feel so frustrated that I can’t wait to leave. But I keep coming back – can’t explain. Since my last visit here (last year March), things seem to have changed or maybe I just didn’t pay attention before. Seem that that are (1) more new car models on the streets; (2) more begging; (3) folks are more vocal about their dissatisfaction with the government; (4) Cuban men are way too sexual and direct. Don’t get me wrong, there are still lots of veryyyy old car model around, but more new car model as well especially Kia and Volkswagen are on the road. More begging in that once they know you are a tourist, they ask if you ... read more