11/10/09- 14/10/04 La Havana, Cuba

After a rather bleary eyed day in Cancun and an even more bleary eyed goodbye to Libby and Andy...


...we caught a fisherprice plane to Cuba. I am not kidding I was expecting the airhostess to have yellow plastic hair. Still we landed safely in the land of all things red and we were quickly ensounced in our not so luxurious, expensive hotel.



After a brief walk along the Malecon we decided to get a bite to eat and having done so had to rush back to the hotel to vomit. The following morning we chose to fill up with breakfast from the hotel before heading out to explore. Havana is really very beautiful. It is full of all that we have come to expect from a colonial city plus all those old cars and happy, helpful people everywhere. This really is most civilised. We spent the next two days walking our feet off in order to take in all that this wonderous city has to offer and understand a bit of the recent history, unfortunately on that score the Revolution museum was not all that enlightening, but I understand that everything before was very, very bad and now everything is very, very, very good. I can certainly vouch for the ice cream.

Above- their former government building, Below- one of Havana's charming squares


On our final night we felt duty bound to experience the local tipple and ended up sort of Salsa dancing the night away at the Casa de Musica with a couple of German girls. I can promise you all though that despite the numerous mojito cocktails consumed we did not take part in the conga.

Had a good time La Havana- it is a lot like many colonial cities we have been to except for the funny old American cars they have there which are about 2 lanes wide. There is also no advertising at all anywhere and I don't think there was on the cable TV we had in the hotel either (seriously, we are slumming it while we are away)- had a look around the shops and there are shelves and shelves of the same detergent and no choice in that- actually, it took us ages to find any shops of worth which weren't just selling tourist tat and cigars.




There is a funny ice cream 'shop' called Coppelia in Havana which we were really confused with- people were hearded into different rooms to have ice cream and there was no menu- people just seemed to be handed a dish of ice cream. We got confused and ran away and found a Coppelia Comercial outside where we could buy the stuff the way we like (with money) though I am sure Fi and I did something wrong and it is just an ordinary shop- if anyone has ever been there please tell me what one is supposed to do. Here is a picture of it:



Lots of people who effectively beg by starting conversations with you and follow you around and tell you about things in Havana which are mostly lies- they then ask for money. Conversation usually runs as follows:

Begger: Hello my friend!
Roger: Hello
Begger: Where are you from?
Roger: England
Begger: England! A beautiful country.... David Beckham... Big Ben... etc

This can go on forever - one guy did it for about 45 minutes and we didn't give him US$3 for his kid- Uncle Fidel should provide.

Not a very good photo showing some of their funny old cars:

Lots of Russian cars there as well. They don't buy Russian underpants anymore, trade embargo or no trade embargo- v. old joke.

These buses were funny too:



They really like this Che fellow there- he's dead now of course- died in Bolivia. He fought with Castro to overthrow the other dictatorship.