Caught a cheeky taxi to the tiny town of Remedios to watch the world famous Las Parrandas fireworks display on Christmas Eve. Ended up staying in an illegal casa for the first night because the whole town was totally rammed, which was fine despite the loud squealing of pigs being slaughtered in the backyard!

Hooked up with some fellow illegals Aussies Flick and Jack to check out the floats for the evenings fireworkfestival and sample some of the local 3 peso beer...that's moneda pesos, so just 3 English pennies to top up our newly purchased beer vessel - two cans welded together to create a giant beer can! Inspired!

Armed with our double cans and bottles of rum we proceeded to spent a totally surreal evening surrounded by homemade rockets going off from 4pm until 5am!!

It was mental...the festival is a kind-of 'firework off' between two rival gangs who try to outdo each other with rockets and by shouting at each other loudest....so for 12 hours we watched as trays of thousands of fireworks were lined up around the plaza and all got lit at the same time by some crazy fool with a kind-of giant blowtorch!

It was like a war zone, bits of rocket in the street, smoke everywhere and hordes of vaguely terrified tourists sheltering in the gazebo in the middle of the park. Not that it was really any kind of shelter, because the rockets just went of everywhere including a few close shaves as they shot straight towards the crowd. It really was the most crazy thing we have ever seen, although admittedly after a bottle of rum and slightly deafened after hours of rockets, it started to seem so normal!!

In the morning, with monumental hangovers and minimal sleep, we surveyed the damage. Apparently 110 people were treated for minor burns the following morning and I was sporting a small burn on the top of my arse after a stray rocket attempted to shoot down my trousers! The plaza was messed up....burned pavements, charred patches on the walls and smoldering piles of rubbish which the local scallies were happily sifting through to find unexploded rockets. Excellent.

Quick pork roll and a proper coke later (you can only buy it in a few places, normally it's Tu Kola which is just wrong) and we were back firmly in bed for some more emergency snoozing. Tim was all of a dither, after declaring in a highly worried fashion that he feared he may have ruined mojitos for himself thanks to the sheer volume of rum he had thrown down his neck!

Hours later, we emerged again somewhat repaired, and tucked into out Christmas feast with Jack and Flick for dinner guests. Magnificent festive feast of chicken, rice and beans.....oh and some roastie potatoes which won the day!

Spent Boxing Day in the traditional manner holed up reading and chilling out.....but on an amazing white sand beach with turquoise water....ha ha ha! It was lovely, a little caye in the Caribbean ocean called Santa Maria just 50 kms away in a taxi to a luxury resort where we just bought a day pass and mingled with the fully fledged all-inclusives!

Tans topped up, we were on our way again the next day to Cienfuegos.....