Cuba highlights
Trip Start
Nov 13, 2005
1
28
72
Trip End
Jul 13, 2006
Havana,
Cuba
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
so i know its been about a zillion years since i wrote anything here.. but i have good reason. One its been the holiday season, and despite the fact that im on a constant holiday, it seems that during the holiday season you can never get anything done..
Cuba was amazing. Interesting and very different from what I expected. I´ll write a few interesting notes here before expanding into what happed with each city that we visited
1. Cubans dont do anything; basically everyone just hangs around, complain that they dont earn much (well they really dont i guess 10us a month minimum), yet only work like 2 days a week for a few hours. They dont have such a bad deal since all are educated have an excellent health system and have necessary food and shelter provided by the state. Yes I guess its expensive to buy luxaries when you dont have much money, but maybe if they worked a little harder they´d earn more.
2. Cubans drink rum like water. Quite literally. Most cubans not only swig rum from the bottle, they will drink a half glass full as if it were water without even scrunching their face
CUBA 01
. Its amazing. It took samson and I a bit to get used to the gulping of rum, but a few bottles of Havana Club reserve later, we were hooked. (Also local litres of rum cost like 1 dollar a bottle, cigars like 5 cents)3. Cubans are surprisingly fashionable. For a country that is apparently quite cut off from the rest of the world in terms of consumer goods, Cubans seem to have enough US infleunced sports ware to last a lifetime. All guys wear semi-fitted tops showing off their buff bodies (that they get by working out in the kiddy playground) and girls wear so little clothes its amazing. Also its very stylish to wear matching tracksuit sets - always the same colour.
4. Cubans dance some crazy salsa. All prepared and practiced, Samson and I felt we were confident enought to show off our salsa moved in Cuba. However little did we know that Cuban salsa was so much different to the Puerto Rican salsa that we have learnt. Cuban salsa involves so much moving and in some cases, there is a method of ¨roulette salsa¨in where 4-6 couples will all dance together crossing each other and spinning all based on one guys command.
5. Cubans have great live music. I guess Ill talk more about this later on, but the entire time that we were in cuba it seems like that we were completely spoilt with music choice. It wasnt a matter of where to go for live music, it was a matter of which live acts were better than others.
6. Cubans are the nicest, most friendly people in the world. That is all the ones that dont just talk to you for your money. Its so bad sometimes because you feel as if everyone just wants to talk to you so they can ask you for something afterwards. People are not shy to ask you to buy them a drink even though they have only met you for 5 seconds. Kids on the street will confidently ome up to travellers and ask them for anything they are wearing and expect you to give it to them.
thats enough of the highlights.. i think its better to look into individual stories to see what really went on behind those cuban doors.
