Islazul Pasacaballo Hotel Cienfuegos

... when we wree lining up some bloke in a uniform came and told us that we couldn't buy tickets there, we had to go down to Viazul (tourist bus section). I pretended not to understand hoping that we could just get a ticket anyway, but then some girl behind explained it all in English. "Because you are not Cubans, you can't get on this bus because it is only for Cubans". Great. So we went to Viazul but they didn't run buses to Rancho ...

Schon die Fahrt hi**h** wird zu einem Erlebnis. Von dem riesigen Auto hatten wir ja schon b**ichtet. Nach ei***** Zeit in den kurvigen B**gen fahren wir auf eine Art Autobahn auf, die sich von Westen bis nach Havanna und von dort wied** weit** in Richtung Osten **streckt. Urspruenglich sollte sie durch das ganze Land bis nach Santiago reichen, doch mit dem Ende d** Sowjetunion war es auch mit dem Bau d** Strasse vorbei, und so ist sie nach wie vor in einem ...

... good. I'll stay here 2 nights because I don't feel like rushing. My next stop will be Trinidad which is about 90 minutes away. Feb 5, It's a small world after all. I bumped into Michael, the Alaskan biker, who is also staying at this casa. His girlfriend got sick and flew back yesterday so he is alone and running out of money because his credit cards are drawn on American banks. He speaks better Spanish than the few words I know so he suggested that we ...

... when I swam out from the beach to an old wrecked landing pier. It was mostly submerged and only long metal poles were left but the amount and variety of coral on it was amazing, much more than any of the surrounding area! There were many shoals of 50+ fish hanging around, some of them so dense you couldnīt see more than 2 deep. It seemed ironic that most of manīs activity around the island such as boats propellers churning up stand, coral killed when ...

... each meal as delicious as the last. Abel also organised all our onward accommodation for us, put us in touch with Margarita (the most amazing Spanish teacher), organised trips to local attractions and salsa lessons for us, and generally made our stay very easy and enjoyable. We spent most of our days studying Spanish, having Salsa lessons (well...Emily having lessons and David watching ...

... thing about Cuba is how early they marry. The normal mattying age of the Cuban woman is 16 or 17. Which means that by their 30s (so at my current age) they already have teenage children. The family in Cienfuegos had 2 daughters - one married a Cuban guy at 17, the orher Canadian guy at 18... Our landlady of Trinidad married at 17 and she has a 10 year old daughter. Another interesting thing are family pictures. I'm ...

... that I only understood a half, but it was funny anyway.... On our arrival at the casa in Cienfuegos we met the owner - Maritza and her mother Mirta. The latter was very talkative and gave us a lot of useful information on where can we go dancing. When we asked her about the key to our room and the house, she said that there's no key but that's no problem, because there are "only two women in the house". It seemed strange because at the same time we ...

... the rum kicks in. By far the highlight is Casa de la Musica - set outside on an immense staircase in the town centre, and easier to succumb to than to head home and try to sleep through the reverberrating bass that invades the entire town. The band plays mostly Salsa, and while the locals take full advantage of the dancefloor, the tourists mostly watch on and take in the upbeat atmosphere. Plenty of Cuban blokes at hand to give free Salsa lessons to ...

... also extremely limited (most stalls offered some or all of: sweets, toothbrushes, pens, basic household items) and it is a real treat for the kids to be able to have a few sweets. The Cubans simply don`t have the money for anything more luxurious - even at a once a year carnival. The luxury for the adults is being able to drink lots of cheap beer and the kids get to have a few sweets and some rides at the funfair. The funfair section was made up of generally ...

... to Cuban business inefficiency is your workforce will arrive when it's managed to flag down a lift! In Habana there are buses that look to be at the end of their lives and articulated trucks (with windows cut in the sides but no seats) that look like a one way trip to the gulag.] All roads lead to Habana and there are no ring roads. Cuba would be a much more likeable country if they spent more money on road signs and less on "Up the revolution" billboards.