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Here's the first monthly instalment of my travel news in two parts. So far we've spent 2 weeks in Cuba, 2 in Central America, and I've learnt that I've foolishly brought along a travelling jinx with me.
Things started looking bad while on our journey to London, when the conductor announced the train would be delayed an hour due to signal failures, however the problems really started while sat in the departure lounge at Heathrow. A flight delay of 45 minutes was shown on the board, which only extended as time went on, meaning a missed connection at Madrid to the one and only flight per day to Cuba was inevitable. After a day spent in what was clearly only a hotel meant for similar unfortunates located just outside the airport, we were on our way again.
We arrived Havana and our made our way to our Casa Particular (a private home letting out 2 guest rooms). The very friendly and helpful owner Luis had a Dragonlady for a wife, who insisted on speaking at full speed in spanish, and used an incredibly patronising half smile when you got whatever point she was trying to make. The thought of her rare hugs when I said something funny/charming/stupid in spanish to her still terrify me.
Havana was a very cool place after we got streetwise to the over friendly locals who were ultimately after something or other from you. We explored a large part of areas both touristy and not, mainly on foot (which, after a month of similar activity, has left us both needing belts to avoid clothing malfunctions). I'm sure everyone's seen photos of Havana with the old colonial buildings mostly falling into disrepair and the old american cars leaving behind trails of smoke, but it was the sort of place that demanded more photos to be taken of it, and I've come away with several hundred.
After 3 days in Havana (with another 3 planned for the end) we decided to spend some time in and around Trinidad. The most painful part of that journey was having to deal with the bus driver's taste in cheesey romantic 80s music videos by some jesus lookalike that I've forgotten the name of. The casa we stayed at was a really nice colonial house, with large open living areas, and a courtyard in the back. The owners Felix and Mercedes were again very friendly, particularly Mercedes who insisted on cooking huge portions of food for her guests, including a couple of lobster meals.
I just spent the last 2 minutes deciding how lame it would be to lead on from that to talking about our sunburn after the first day at the beach, but I've decided to risk it, as it's a good comparison. Even though we'd been respectful of the intense carribean sun in the middle of their summer, our pasty white skin had turned bright red pretty much from head to toe, we laughed about it until the pain kicked in. A few days avoiding the sun later and we were ready to hit the beach again, both fully covered with a thick layer of high factor sun cream. Snorkling just off the coast at a black coral reef was incredible, with a huge number and variety of sea creatures.
We spent most of our nights in Trinidad at a bar called the Casa de la Musica, positioned on a long set of steps next to a church. They generally had a couple of bands per night playing salsa music, to which very skilled locals and tourists would twirl each other around with a mass of tangled arms. We organised a couple of private dance lessons with a professional who would only ever dress entirely in white with matching bag, hat and umbrella, he was a bit camp, but a good teacher. My funky moves were clearly too much for his rigid definition of 'good salsa', so he told me several times to stop flailing my arms and other body parts around. We got up to a very basic level, but enough to feel confident enough to dance away to the bands a few steps down from where the main action was.
Back in Havana, we continued exploring and getting some spanish practise by talking to locals. One guy, who turned out to be a retired bus driver went into quite a bit of detail about life in Cuba, and the problems and annoyances with their socialist system, so we spent quite some time discussing things with him.
Our time in Cuba sadly came to an end, and once again, the effects of Siobhan the travel jinx struck....
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