Hotel Rancho Luna Cienfuegos

... bottled water, rum and mixer... oh, we did find some chocolate :) We got hassled quite a lot to get in the cyclos or horse drawn taxis, but we wanted to walk. Both to kill time and to justify all the ****** food we'd been eating.

The second day we headed to the bus station to try and get to the nearest beach. Our casa ownder told us it was 14km away at Rancho Luna. We found a ticket window that said the destination in it ...

... br>
7) Place two ice cubes in

8) Pour at least 100ml of white Cuban rum

9) Top up with sparkling water

10) Stir

11) Place a straw in

12) Drink and start all over again !!!

... to trade my Mazda for a horse and cart back home but the reality of winter puts a damper on the dream. Compared to Habana, the pollution is minimal, not to mention the plumbing. As I make my way down the mountain from the summit I encounter several groups of children making their way up with a couple of adults in each. They are wearing uniforms with scout-like neckties and I guess it is a school outing. The adults seem to be labouring a lot more than I did on the way up ...

... special. So I dipped it into the soup, chewed it like a steak and filled my appetite with Cuban hospitality at it's best. After supper I chatted a little with my Italian friends who are off to Holguin for their flight home on Sunday. They are a beautiful couple and I have enjoyed meeting them. . Tomorrow I move into their room because of the fiesta that Julio is hosting. He needs this part of the house which has two bedrooms for the crowd that he is expecting. I jokingly ...

Feb 4, The bus left Vinales about 8:30 and reached Cienfuegos just before 3PM. I was really glad that I could get a direct bus here rather than transferring in Havana. I bumped into a guy about my age who I had met in Habana at Ania's place. He is from the Toronto area and an independent traveller who flew in from Antigua. As I disembarked from the bus I was greeted by a guy who took me to a casa for 15CUC per night. Breakfast is 3CUC and supper is 5CUC which is ...

... made are capped. Because of this, it is important to always have your rooms rented, hence the desperation at the bus station of people trying to entice tourists to stay at their homes. A young girl caught our attention and started showing us pictures of a nice double room. Tired and hot, we followed her to 'Casa Martha's' Martha, the woman of the house showed us our room. It was clean and comfortable so we took it. Most ...

Ahhh..... Trinidad... When we arrived into Trinidad... there was... wait for this.... 60, YES that's a Six and a Zero, people waiting for the tourists to come off the bus. They were ALL trying to get people to "their" Casa. We just took our backpacks off the bus and sat down watching the commotion for 20 minutes. Once things had settled down, we sent Sarah out to scout around for a place to live. Somehow or other we decided to ...

We´ve arrived to Cinenfuegos, the place where a fierce battle of the 5th September 1957 in which many brave Cubanos of the resistance movement were squashed (according to Footprint) by Batista's soldiers, took place. It' supposedly a city with vivid nightlife and that's what we're here to check. It's a nice little town with no hustlers and a lot of sea spirit. Our dancing night turned into a night of a Cuban humouristic show of 2 men from Havana (Negro ...

... home, tried to open the wrong door and then knocked when realising my key didn't work. Over the course of the night/morning, Marielle (the host) kept knocking on my door to wake me up and ask if I was ok. I advised her that I would be more ok if she just let me sleep. *A "blowout" refers to one of my thongs/flip-flops/jandals losing one of its plugs due to extreme forces applied to it. Unlike in Tralee, Ireland, in this instance I suffered a right side blowout.

... by the government. At certain points along the highway (usually under motorway underpasses) crowds of bedraggled people congregated with soggy luggage trying to flag down a ride. Some would wave money although there is no requirement to pay. At very busy stops officials would force traffic to stop and take an allocation of passengers - they usually stop the high sided, open top, lorries and jam in as many people as can stand. So another contributing ...