Back home again....

I'll finish this journal now, at home. I wasn't able to do this in Cuba -I promised to do this last Tuesday, you remember?-, because the Internet PC at the hotel was constantly crashing.

The flight back home was a very long one, 16 hours. We first went to Mexico to pick up travelers there. We got out of the plane to spend some time at the airport. Well, at least I can say I've been in Mexico...

The last week in Cuba we made two trips, one to the towns of Cienfuegos and Trinidad and the next day a walk through the rain forest in the mountains nearby Trinidad, the second trip being catamaran sailing.

Cienfuegos and Trinidad are both beautiful and romantic, not very big 'Spanish' cities, that show little of the decay we saw in Havana. The houses are beautifully restored (or in the process of being restored). There was a lot of begging though in Trinidad...

The trip through the rain forest the next day was spectacular. We were transported to the starting point of the walk in a Russian truck, and then: wading through a river, diving from pool to pool, watching breeding hummingbirds -we saw them at the hotel as well-, observing very tiny bromelias an orchids, a very good guide: spectacular.

The catamaran sailing trip was so-so. The trip was ruined by a group of Italian tourists, who came straight from the disco and thought that they should amuse the other people with singing and loud jokes in Italian for the rest of the day. Though swimming with dolphins isn't encouraged by the ecologist world, this part of the trip was fun. And the small 'Bounty' islands North of the main island are beautiful. White sand, green sea, you know what I mean.

Conclusion: a mixed experience. Cuban nature is fantastic, the people are extremely friendly. Especially in the rural area's you can see that the Cuban (communist) revolution did a lot of good to the country: free healthcare, free education -schools were build everywhere inbetween 1960 and 1980-, no poverty. But I think Havana is a disaster: poverty, misery, everywhere tourist hustlers, begging, many houses fallen into disrepair or collapsed, a real third world environment... But some relativity is on it's place here: I saw this ONLY in Havana.

There's no freedom of press in Cuba, you can't buy ANY foreign newspaper. The local/national paper, the Granma, is filled with rethoric and biased news, the local Spanish TV channels aren't much better. I visited several bookshops: rethoric everywhere (life of Castro and Che Guevara in dozens of variations, political books against the USA), biased or censored literature but also many scientific or educative books. And again some relativity: I think the illiteracy in Cuba is FAR LOWER than in the USA...

The Cuban people are for the most part happy and friendly, but suffer a lot from the USA embargo: this should stop straight away. Freedom of trade and normal travelling (between CUBA and the USA, it's nearist neighbour...) should be possible. The USA should forget -after 45 years!- that all these 50 to 60 years old Chevrolets, Cadillacs and Buicks probably once belonged to US citizens. But I guess we'll have to wait 'till Fidel is in his undoubtedly glorious grave...

And on every corner of the street, in every café, restaurant and hotel: live Cuban, mostly acoustic, music! It's a pity it's not possible to show this (short video's with music) on Fotki.

I think I'll go there again!

Hi all of you,

Last Monday we had to stay inside the hotel. It was a dark, rainy and windy day, but not dangerous at al. Just the borders of Ivan hit Varadero, nothing happened. We tried to rent a car to visit Havana, but ´they´ gave no permission...

The next day, Tuesday, it was still raining and dark, but no wind anymore. So we rented a car and went to Havana.
Every sightseeing place in Havana was still closed because of Ivan, and rain was pouring from the sky. Havana is not a good place to visit when the weather is bad. The poverty you can see everywhere, the houses in very bad condition houses that would have been destructed everywhere else, the dirt on the streets, everything gets an extra accent ´cause of the bad weather... The old part of the city (behind the ´Capitolio´, the main government building) really looks very sad. People in rags begging for money, everywhere ´guides´ that offer you unwanted services, eveywhere people that offer you Cuban cigars for a very special price. And young girls sitting on the sidewalk, looking at you with eyes that say ´please take me away from here, rich man...´. We hired a riksha (a bicycle taxi) for one hour that showed us this nasty part of Cuba without the ´driver´ realising what he showed us. Of course not, he lives there, getting ten dollars for this ride, which is 25% of the average monthly Cuban income... I thought then that the USA should stop the embargo immediately, to give this people more chances to survive in a decent way. Some realism though: this is the ONLY part of Cuba, and a small neighbourhood of Havana, that looked this bad. Although people on the countryside live mostly in small houses, sometimes made of oil barrels, we didn´t see this poverty there.

The next day (last Wednesday) the sun shined again, and then Havana looks much better! But is is sad to visit the Capitolio and the ´Revolution Square´, visiting buildings that are richly ornamented and try to show the success of the Communist revolution, while demolished houses are on the next corner...

We drove a little bit more westward, direction Pinar Del Rio, and saw what Ivan did. No electricity, I saw three very big electric masts (I hope is is the right word) lying on the ground, blown down. Nobody got killed. We drove into the mountains nearby, where a tourist probably is seen once evey ten years. When we stopped at a little café, people where greeting us as if we came from another world, but with great enthousiams and extremely friendly...

Korrie went diving yesterday and is diving today, so I´m at the beach reading. And every night live music, music, music...

Tomorrow we´ll both have a day at the beach, and Sunday we´ll be making of an two-day (organised) trip to Trinidad, which as far as I have heard has nothing of the bad things Havana showed us, and the naxt day a trip through the rain forest, walking through rivers, things like that. It might be adventurous...

See you next Tuesday!

Cheers, John & Korrie

Hi all of you.

First about the weather: fine! I think Ivan will not hit Cuba (info from 7.00 PM this day), at least will be far away from here. All preparations have been made though in Varadero to expect the worse: all windows covered with wood, all things that can be blown away are moved to the inside of the hotel. But the restaurant and the bar are open...

This is the eleventh day of our stay overhere. Some impressions:

Cubans are extremely friendly people, love to talk to tourist (all from Europe and Canada, but I met one USA citizen who came here through Mexico). They still are very proud of their leader Fidel Castro, who is on TV almost every night to explain his visions about society..
Although the people are generally very poor, there´s no starving, and health care and education are free for everybody.

Music is everywhere, EVERY night or afternoon we listen to life music. All bands are playing traditional acoustic Cuban Music (son), like you might have heard from Ray Cooder and his Buena Vista Social Club. Great!

We visited Pig´s Bay (you know, from the USA invasion in 1961), a city called Matanzas (very beautiful) and the surroundings of Varadero, all by car. The trip to Trinidad and the rain forest for today was cancelled because of Ivan. We´ll do this next Sunday. We´ll have to visit Havana -probably 2 or 3 days- this week, do the rest of Korrie´s diving -three days- and visit more of the surroundings. Ivan is interrupting this program severely! But we´ll manage...

We´ll do a lot of reading at the beach, sipping local cerveza (beer) and coctails, with ´ron´ of course.

I´ll keep you informed in the near future. Pictures must wait till we return home.

Greetings from John and Korrie

Arrived 1.00 PM local time (same time as ET), which is 7.00 PM in the Netherlands. Checked in at the hotel at about 3.00 PM. We survived until 9.00 PM, then we couldn´t keep our eyes open any more. Great hotel though, at the beach. Our room looks over the sea...
Next day stayed at the beach. A real Caribbean beach, white sand, palm trees. Today we explored the surroundings a little bit, and Korrie booked 10 dives. We also booked a ´survival´ trip of two days through the forest. Tomorrow we´ll explore the neighbouring cities, and make plans to fill in the rest of the holiday.
Yesterday night we went to a local restaurant whit music. Fantastic! This is one of the reasons I came here.

See you soon, John

Tomorrow morning (Thursday 2 september) 8.15 AM we're leaving from Schiphol. Arrival about 12.45. As Cuba is six hours back in time, this means a flight of 10½ hours! But we'll survive...