Viva cuba libre

Trip Start Nov 13, 2005
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Trip End Jul 13, 2006


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Flag of Cuba  ,
Saturday, December 31, 2005

we arrived back in cuba in time for what we thought would be a huge new years festivities. Come the everning of the 31st, nothing happened, the streets were dead and people were at home having a family dinner. Come midnight, everyone runs to their balcony with buckets of water in tow, thowing it on the street in hope of hitting someone that happens to be driving by. Then they go back to sleep.

Since that was all the festivities to join in on, we decided to join in and threw water off the balcony until we got bored of it and went to sleep.

What we didnt realise at the time however, is that cubans dont celebrate the new years, and instead celebrate the 1st of january which happens to be their revolution day.
Following the viva cuba libre signs all over town we stumbled across a huge stage, screens and what was about every cuban in havana partying away and dancing on the streets. We started dancing around with a few cubans, until the crowd got a bit rough and we backed away. People were generally quite happy and dancing and we were lucky to experience some pretty good music. We met one cuban that was especially funny that for some reason insisted that we knew yaoming personally.

The following day we stumbled across a band on the street that were playing the coolest sort of afro cuban beats, together with dancers and vocals. The drummers were going crazy and at one stage they brought out the man- the ´man´ of afro cuban music apparently who today although about 90 years old, belted out a few afro cuban notes himself. Very cool.

We also visted a few of the bars made famous by hemmingway himself.. ¨Mi mojito en la bodguita del media, mi daquiri en El floridita¨ We listened to his advice and did exactly that. Mojitos in La bodguita and daquiris in el floridita. Needless to say that the mojitos in la boguita were probably the best ive ever had, made better by the fact that they use 3 year havana club to make the mojito.

As souvineers of our trip to cuba samson was not shy in packing a box of cohibas (which i suspect are fake) as well a few bottles of 7 year old havana club in his bag.

cuba was good. made better by some of the cool people that we met, made worse by the people who try to use u because you are walking money, but made spectacular by the music, the mojitos, the rum and the beautiful carribean beaches.
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