Cuba! October, 2008

Touching down in Habana after less than 13 hours of sleep in 3-days (A special thank you goes out to my Travel Agent for not telling me my flight was bumped-up 24 hours until 1.5 days before leaving), I changed some money and shared a taxi into town with some other travellers. Walking from Habana Veija to Vedado with my pack along some unknown street for over an hour, I stopped for food and rest when I couldn't bear it any longer. Chicken with a side salad and Bread turned-out to be a scoop of chicken salad with 3 half-slices of white bread and 3 thin slices of cucumber..... Apparantly fed and rested, I continued for about another 45 minutes until I found a place to stay and promptly fell asleep not to wake until the next morning.

My next 2 days were spent walking through Habana. I explored the residential areas and many of the back streets in addition to the areas set-up for the tourists. Most of the buildings were built and designed in the early 1900s, and on the outside, they have not since been changed. Walking around town, it was like being in a time-warp. This is what a city looks like if there is no (or fery little) maintenance for 50 years. With all of the original, albeit crumbling, detailing in the columns and moulding, one can tell that this was a very beautiful and affluent town in the 50s. Habana is known as a 'museum on wheels.' Along with the buildings, there has been very little change to the cars since the revolution in 1959. The cars are incredibly well preserved, and though they may not meet the emissions standards of Kyoto, it's pretty fascinating to see them still being used. According to the man in the park I sat next to when I ate lunch, the best car in Cuba is the 1957 Chevrolet - It is still running well and better than the other models.

The morning of the 4th day I caught a bus to the Town of Trinidad on the South coast. On the bus I met a couple from England (Sasha & Lawrence), who, like me, were planning to stay in Trinidad for 5 nights. For the remainder of the week, I would meet Sasha & Lawrence in the evenings for dinner or to watch performances in town or to sit on my balcony with a bottle of rum and a bottle of TropiCola. for my days in Trinidad, I explored the town, I went hiking in the mountains, I rented a bike for the day to ride to the beach, where I spent the day reading, swimming, and getting a tan (because if I had come home from Cuba without at least 1 full day on the beach, I'd get myself into trouble). On the morning of my birthday I hopped in a boat and went scuba diving. We were down for about 50 minutes, and though there weren't many fish, the coral was really interesting: Long chartreuse tube ones with tiny fish inside, and big spider-web-type ones in purple and red and blue and green. Later I walked down the beach to find my friends, and was greated by a Carlos (a then-unknown Cuban man) leading the beach in a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday. The rest of the day was spent on the beach with Sasha, Lawrence, Carlos, and 2 guys from Norway who were staying in Carlos' Casa Particulares: Kristian & Morten.

Back in Habana, I checked-into a hotel where I was meeting my group. I met my roomate Kate, and we got ready for a week of cycling. For the week, we were primarily in the Province of Pinar Del Rio, and each day we would bike to a new town. While cycling, we really got the chance to see the countryside (something I had not really seen the first week except from the window on my 6-hour bus rides to & from Trinidad). The region where we were cycling (in Western Cuba) had been hit particularily hard by the 2 hurricanes this summer (Gustav & Ike). Entire areas once forrested, looked to us like farmland. Much of the rebuilding that has occurred has been to the tourist hotels and infrastructure. Though I felt guilty about this at first, it makes sense that they would first repair that which helps to bring-in the most income. The area where I noticed most of the impact from the Hurricanes was in the food. Vegetables and fruit was scarse, and I had very little 'green' in my diet the entire time. I did find a small farmer's kiosk in Habana one day and bought a fresh avocado. That, along with fresh bread from the market that morning made for one of the best meals I had on my entire holiday! I truly had no idea how avocados were supposed to taste/look when they are allowed to ripen before being harvested - Wow! As I write this, I have now been back in Canada for 1-week, and yesterday Cuba was hit with a third 'late-season' hurricane Paloma. I'm afraid it will be a very long time before the agricultural indistry can recover from this year. I hope very much that it does not result in wide-spread malnutrition.

Halloween was my last night in Cuba, and after dinner with our entire cycling 'team' at the hotel, a few of us decided to trust our lives in the hands of a friend of a friend of a friend and go to a local Salsa club where he used to work. I'm afraid I'll never be a dancer: Salsa or otherwise, but we did have a great time - no better way to end a great 2-weeks in my mind.

Arriba,

Abajo,
A Centro,

A Diente!