The reason I caught a bus for 16 hours immediately upon arriving in Cuba was to ensure I was in Santiago de Cuba for the Festival of Fire / Festival del Caribe. I (and other travelers I met) had been anticipating lots of activities, colour and music – but not quite. I finally found a…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted some bird photos 🙂 Got to see the Cuban national bird – a Trojan called the Tocororo – a few times during my trip. Another gorgeous bird whose colours are reflected in the colours of the Cuban flag.
There are no chicken buses in Cuba. There are many forms of transportation, but not a single chicken bus – I guess the United States embargoed the sale of their old school buses along with everything else. That being said, foreigners are very limited in which long-distance public transport they can actually take – and…
If you want to stop emotional eating – Cuba is the place for you! There are no packets of chips; there is no chocolate (well, except locally made chocolate in Baracoa); you have to look hard for icecream, and when you do find it you have to be prepared to eat 450mL; it is rare…
In Cuba, the most common form of accommodation is to stay with a Cuban family in what is called a Casa Particular. These are identified by what looks like a blue anchor sign – and they really are absolutely everywhere. Basically, Cuban families make spare rooms available for tourists in their homes and they earn…
It’s a bloody long way from Havana to Santiago de Cuba! One doesn’t generally think of Cuba being a big island, but it is actually over 1200km long and anyone who has bused it from one side to the other will testify that takes some time to traverse! I decided to fly into Havana and…
Arrived in Cuba and decided to get out of my confort zone by asking some other passengers whether they wanted to share a taxi into Havana (it’s US$25). I struck lucky on the second try and the added bonus was that the taxi we got was one of the old 1950s ones (those ones are…
In addition to a myriad of confusing information on the internet about money in Cuba, there was an equal amount of conflicting information about the internet itself in Cuba. Talking with a few folk here, this has changed very quickly in the past year, but here’s the current state of play as at July 2016:…
One of the things that was giving me a slight amount of stress before I arrived in Cuba was the issue of money. I didn’t want to have to carry enough money for a month in Cuba in cash, but there was so much scattered information on the internet about what would and would not…
Central American local markets are fascinating places. They are usually dark, cramped rabbit warrens that sell everything under the sun at much cheaper prices that you can get in the supermarkets and shops elsewhere in the town. Antigua’s local market in Guatemala is no exception. The main reason I keep coming back to the local…