Islazul Libertad Santiago de Cuba

... and stumbled to our casa quite late. A few  days later we bumped into one of the students at the bus terminal.  He wanted to give us a reggaton CD that he and his friends recorded at a studio.  He waited for more than an hour for his friend to bring the cd to us and he insisted we took extra fruit for our bus journey.  It is these types of incidents which there were several that you really feel the warmth of ...

... ingedoken na een vermoeiende dag. 11-12-2008: Santiago de Cuba ligt ingeklemd tussen de Sierra Maestra (nationaal park) en de zee en is qua inwonertal (450.000) de tweede stad van Cuba. De voormalige Plaza de Armas is het hart van Santiago en is omgedoopt tot parque Cespedes (stichter van de natie) en is een plek waar men elkaar ontmoet, een praatje maakt en feest viert. Je raakt al gauw betrokken bij een gesprek ...

Le pire trajet en bus de ma vie: 9h et malade comme un chien... un mec monte je ne sais plus dans quelle ville et s´assoit à côté de moi, peux pas lui parler, enfin si je lui parle mais pas très bien! il s´appelle Christian. 2 jours à Santiago ou j´ai un peu planée mais bien quand même. je recroise Christian dans la rue. Départ pour Baracoa à 7h lundi 18 matin, je recroise Christian à la oficina Viazul, décidemment Viazul...!!!

... couple and American girls that I met on the bus look as equally surprised by the crowd of Casa owners and bicitaxi drivers that crowd around the bus station entrance like a mob on a picket line. You can physically see each tourist steal themselves and gather the courage ready to push through the crowd. I look for my name on a sign in the hope that Klaas and Annelies have arranged accommodation but there's nothing. I push through the crowd with people grabbing at me and a ...

... rest of the way to the bus station - Heather (Feather) is a Californian, a rare surprise in Cuba, most Americans not wanting to get caught here as it can incur a prison sentence if they're caught (or so I'm told). Heather and her friend Elaine haven't pre-booked and don't make the cut for the bus. I find myself sat across the aisle from Klaas and Anneleis, Dutch friends and teachers who are using 4 weeks of their school holidays to see Cuba. We strike up a friendship and ...

... of the Reggaeton music in his clapped out but cool Lada. We dumped our bags off hen went straight out for the Fiesta del Fuego. Unfortunately we didn't realise we w**en't completely central and ended up a pretty intimidating stage area surrounded by jinetaros (hustl**s) off**ing us lit**aly ev**ything and anything we wanted. We went and got a few be**s with one of them, and people stared a bit less aft** that! Then we ...

... corner store and got some water, juice and cola, although we had to fend off the advances of a guy who was trying to 'help' us buy the things we needed (even though it wasn't exactly hard) and then kept pointing to the open sores on his face and tried to get us to buy him medicine. I was pretty unimpressed. We headed back to our casa - Maruchi had kindly offered for us to keep using the room and shower (she ...

... are even more here in Santiago. It´s funny to say but at first it was kind of strange seeing black people speaking Spanish. Only because we haven´t travelled all that widely. Kind of like ray finding it really weird seeing islanders in New Caledonia speaking French. So we are off to the Dominican Republic today. We were going to go to Jamaica but it was really expensive and not really practical time-wise. So we´ll stay in DR for a couple of weeks before we fly to Brazil.

... kids, Laura and Amanda, made us soooo welcome. It was really nice to get some homely treatment... we ate our breakfast and dinners there every night.... absolutely awesome!!! The apartment has windows all around, so all we did is sat at the table reading, guitaring, and watching the world pass by below. We saw some pretty strange things, like the beggers trying to hide their money cups when the police came around the corner.... to the little 4ft cigar ...

... represent the machetes that the army generals used. That's seriously all I can recall about the memorial. One of these days I should ask Dan if he remembers anything more about it. If he does I will include it here. The bus pulled up to the memorial and our TM gave us a half an hour to explore it (it wasn't very big). She warned us that once we got off the bus, some of the locals would ask us for money. Dan and I were the first ones off the bus and we were immediately MOBBED. We had ...