After the freezing weather and the snow that we experienced in Peru, when I first arrived in Havana, Cuba, the heat seemed to be a very welcome relief! That said it was the middle of the night and it was still about 30 degrees, so I should have been a little wary!

I was a little nervous arriving in Cuba, being a communist country and all, and quite strict with who can enter and leave the country, but I went through the airport pretty quickly, and it was great to see Luke waiting at Arrivals for me.

It didn’t take long to realise that this was a poor country, as the taxi driver had to stop to fill up with petrol on the way into town, and did so using a coke bottle of fuel that he pulled out of the boot! This was further reiterated by breakfast the next morning, ‘toast’ which was really just bread warmed by being left out in the heat for too long. But that said, our room was air conditioned and that would really make up for anything!

We soon realised that the heat and humidity would prove to be somewhat of an obstacle to our touristy adventures (38-40 degrees and very humid), but essentially that just meant that a long afternoon siesta was justified, as it was far too hot to be walking around outside between lunc htime and about 5 o’clock. We also learned that things are done a little bit differently in Cuba. There are two currencies used in Cuba, the local peso and the CUC (for tourists), and that means that tourists can only used some ATMs and not enter all shops (some are for locals only). We also learned that the locals are not supposed to have too much interaction with the tourists, unless it is specifically part of their job. On the first day, we were trying to find an ATM, and the guy who was the doorman at our hotel, happened to bump into us on his day off and offered to help us out. Partway towards the bank, he was stopped by two policeman and a military officer and questioned for about 15 minutes, whilst Luke and I waited. In the end he said to go on and he’d see us the next night at work. We never saw him again... who knows?

As a general rule, the food was also pretty terrible, and the service even worse. But when you are working in one of the state run restaurants and earning $8-13 a month, I’d be a little grumpy too! That said, we did find a great little parador in Havana, a little restaurant run out of someone’s private house (there is supposed to be a maximum of only 12 seats, but often then sneak some more in), and a brilliant Italian restaurant on our last night in Cuba. With these few exceptions, the food was pretty bland. Everything came with rice and a few slices of tomato and raw cabbage, and often the meat was of cuts that you wouldn’t even feed your pets – pieces of gristle and bone throughout.

Despite any of this, Cuba was absolutely unreal. To appreciated Havana, I think that you have to be a little nostalgic and take yourself back to the 1940s and 50s when the casinos were booming, the US mafia was running the place, and there was money to be had by all. In its day, I daresay Havana would have been the most beautiful city in the world - the architecture is unbelievable. Now, most of the buildings have fallen into an absolute state of disrepair and are crumbling and missing doors and windows and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint.  But come night time, and the buildings were lit up with flood lights, hiding all of the flaws, they still look pretty spectacular.

We had two days in Havana at the beginning of our holiday where we checked out the old town, some of Ernest Hemmingways’ old haunts, the malecon, sampled quite a few ice creams, and naturally, we also drank a fair bit of Cuban rum - enjoying mojitos, daiquiris, ron Collins and whatever else may have been on the menus.

We had then decided to book five nights staying in an all inclusive resort on Cayo Guillermo at the top (?) of Cuba. This place was pretty much paradise. Bright blue, tropical water, white sand, millions of palm trees, sun lounges all along the beach, a massage therapist set up under a hut on the jetty and blue skies. The package was also all-inclusive, and so that meant cocktails under a palm tree on the beach at any time of day! We stayed in a bungalow and it was only a short walk to the restaurant, to the bar, to reception and to the beach. The resort had a pool, but we never actually used it – when you have a beach as beautiful as the one that we had on our doorstep, why would you go anywhere else?

There were lots of activities on offer, so we pretty much tried everything. We each had massages on the first day, Luke went for a ride in this boat/plane contraption, we went scuba diving (inquired at 9.30am in the morning, pool lesson at 10.00, on the reef at midday – who needs certifications! And we went down to 16m), and chartered a boat and went deep sea fishing. Turns out that I am the undisputed champion of Cuban fishing, there was only one fish caught all morning, and guess who caught it! Among our days on Cayo Guillermo, there were also two ‘nothing’ days, as there was a tropical storm passing over Cuba and that meant that the weather was pretty miserable and all water activities were cancelled. Fortunately, the Olympics were on, so we could watch them. This did mean, however, an awful lot of Greco roman wrestling, weight lifting and indoor volleyball (the sports that Cuba featured in).

I also like to think that we did our bit for the Cuban revolution one night. We went out to dinner to one of the fancy restaurants in the resort and found that there were a few sacrifices that we had to make. A slight modification needed to be made to our pizzas as they were out of nearly every topping (though there did seem to be plenty of carrot), there was not cabernet sauvignon despite there being 3 or 4 on the menu, and there was no choice to be made regarding dessert! This follows four or five days of there being no internet access at the resort, b/c they were out of access cards and new ones hadn’t arrived yet. And they never did either!

With some sadness, we moved on to Trinidad after six days on Cayo Guillermo, and since transportation is pretty limited if you are not coming or going from Havana, this meant that we caught a taxi for 3 ½ hours! Not the cheapest way, but there was no other option. For the first time this trip we got ‘done’ by a jinintero, as the taxi driver pretended that the casa that we wanted to stay in would be full and so took us to his ‘friends’ casa instead, where we got charged a terrible rate and the lady tried to screw us for every dollar. But, again, it was too hot to be bothered to do anything about moving, so we put up with it for four nights!

Trinidad was pretty nice, much smaller than Havana, and a little quieter than I might have imagined. We had lobster for dinner the first night (a $10 a serve, how can you go past it!) and found a cool outdoor bar in the ruins of an old theatre to have a drink in. The following day, we made one of our silliest decisions. We decided that it would be a good idea to hire bikes and ride the 16kms to the nearest beach, Playa Ancon. In any month, other than the summer, this is probably a good idea and a pleasant experience, but it was a terrible one on this particular day. It was unbelievably hot, the road seemed never ending, and unfortunately when we got there, it didn’t even compare to the beaches of Cayo Guillermo. That said, the tropical storm had ripped through the area only three days earlier, so it wasn’t entirely surprising that the water was a bit murky and there was sea weed all over the beach. So after a quick dip, we started making our way back to Trinidad, but only got so far as a lunch stop (where absolutely nothing listed on t menu was available!) when we decided that enough was enough and hailed a cab to take us that 13kms back home! The saving grace was a delicious ice cream parlour that we found in Trinidad – I think we had three ice creams each that day!

The following day we made another not to fantastic decision (b/c essentially deciding to do anything slightly vigorous during the day was not so good). We went up to Topes Collantes  to do a walk down to a waterfall. According to the guide books, it was supposed to be cooler up there and more like cloud forest. Turned out that it was almost as hot up here, but we made the walk down to the waterfall and had a swim, and then made the return journey back up. It only took about 45 minutes to get back up, but I almost fainted a couple of times and there were quite a few stops along the way. Fortunately there was a bar at the top of the trail which sold plenty of water served the best lunch we had the entire time in Cuba! Toasted sandwiches with cheese, ham, mustard and chutney. Actually, they would have been good in any country!

We made it back to Trinidad, and that night contributed to the cause of the revolution once again. The entire town  experienced a black out that night whilst we were out for dinner. This meant dinner by candlelight, and since there were absolutely no lights on in the town, it would have been impossible to find our way back to the casa, so we did the only sensible thing of staying there and testing the restaurants cocktail list! We had actually chosen this place to eat because it overlooked a plaza area where live music was usually played. We’d been sampling cocktails long enough for the lights to come back on, so made our way to the plaza, along with what seemed  every other tourist in Trinidad (the stairs were packed!) for some live Cuban salsa music. People (mainly locals) were up and dancing at the front of the stage – it was good fun.

We went snorkelling the next day, travelling out by catamaran to one of the nearby cayos, however, as the tropical storm has passed through only a few days earlier, the water was still pretty murky, so there wasn’t too much to see.  It made for a nice day in the sun and in the water, however, there was still more fun to be had. Luke gets one thousand bonus points because he agreed to come and have a salsa lesson with me that night. But it wasn’t any salsa lesson, it was conducted in the cool bar that we’d gone to a few nights earlier (in the ruins), on the stage, with the spotlight on us, and we were the only two taking a lesson at that time – slightly nerve wrecking!  But we had a lovely teacher who kept promising ‘only one more’ (step to learn), but bombarding us with at least six or seven! In the end we had the basic steps down and one tricky spin move!

The following day it was back to Havana by bus. It was about 5-ish hours, stopping for a break just near a town called Australia, and stopping for the bus driver to pull over on the side of the highway, dash across to a friend’s (?) house, chat through the window for about 10 minutes, finally come back with a bag of lemons and then we continued on our way! I don’t think I mentioned what the roads in Cuba were actually like. As a general rule, the bitumen was okay – few major pot holes here and there – but there was ever form of transport moving along these roads – massive, old 1950s cars, trucks, buses (the snazzy tourist ones and the run down local ones), army trucks, new cars, bicycles, horse and carts, donkeys. You name it, if it had wheels or hooves,  we would have seen it on the roads at some point in time.

So we had one final afternoon in Havana where we brought lots rum and cigars to take home/London, ate yet more ice cream, and then for dinner we went to the amazing Italian restaurant – by far a standout in Cuba. It was the most sensational meal, and we were only disappointed to find it on our last night. We also found (or had recommended by a Tasmanian couple who were staying in the same casa as us in Trinidad) a great casa in Havana, where the host was lovely, the air con was cool and breakfast the next morning was tasty! The only other thing that we were slightly disappointed about was that we forgot to take photos of Havana city. It is unlike any other city and it’s just a pity we didn’t capture it.

On the way to London we had a one day stop-over in Mexico City, so we briefly visited the Zocolo (to do something touristy) and then shopped to our hearts content, buying one million DVDs, sunnies, t-shirts and all sorts of things at ridiculously cheap prices. We arrived in London after a cramped, but uneventful flight, and for me, I found it strange that after four months in Spanish speaking countries, suddenly everyone was speaking English. I had forgotten how easy it was to talk to attendant selling the tube tickets, or to the checkout lady in the supermarket and not have to bumble my way through! Ah... the simple things!

So we are now living in Battersea with Robbo and Chris, two of Luke’s friends from Brisbane, and everything is great. But now the sad part – time to step back into the real world, the holiday is over and I need to get a job...