Havana, Cuba

Folks,

We're back in Havana, and flying out tomorrow. I'm flying back to Cancún in a flooded Mexico, and Jack flies back to a wintery Dublin via Gatwick.

The pic of the week shows the Che memorial in Plaza de la Revolución in Havana.

Trinidad
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We got lost, of course, heading from Cienfuegos to Trinidad. You just have to build time for getting lost into your plans.

After getting lost we picked up a hitch hiker to help navigate. He asked where we were staying, and when we told him he screwed up his nose, telling us that where we were going the beach was polluted, and that it was much nicer to stay in the city, and that we could stay in his house.

He was really put out when we said that we'd stick to our original plan. We got to Playa la Boca, where we were met with crystal clear water with kids splashing around in it.

We went snorkeling just up the coast, and it was beautiful. Really clear shallow water that went for miles over coral and rock and teeming with fish.

I liked the historical centre of Trinidad, although it was touristy.

Journey to Viñales
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We braced ourselves for the long journey to Viñales, knowing how difficult journeys are. We picked up a very demanding hitch hiker. She told us to turn on the music, asked me to 'go easy' when I went over a pot hole, and told us that our air conditioning wasn't strong enough. When she left I was down to a quarter tank of petrol, and was on the look out for a petrol station.

We drove the whole way to Havana without seeing one. It was now well below empty and had visions of us running out and hitching like everyone else.

We went to a garage in Havana, and the guy directed us to the pump and spoke to us while another guy filled up the tank. I asked him about finding the motorway in the direction of Viñales. He started to give very complicated directions, and then went back inside for more information. A woman who was with him continued with the directions, but said that she knew they were complicated.

He arrived back out, and said his boss said that he could drive out with us to the road, and that maybe we could do the same for him someday if he was ever in Ireland. So he got into the car, and told us the woman was his wife and asked if she could come too.

I was suspicious, but thought that maybe it wasn't far, or that it was in the direction of where they lived. I hoped that this was maybe an example of the friendliness of Cubans that I'd been told about.

They brought us on a complicated journey, and then we emerged on a big road, and they said it was the motorway we were looking for, and they would get out.

Then he asked for 20 pesos for a taxi back for them. That's about €16, and way over what any local would pay for a taxi I'm convinced. It was a pure scam, and ended up in a shouting match. He then said he had 10 pesos, so just needed 10 from us. We ended up giving him 3.

At this stage we just felt that people were attempting to scam us every way we looked. I realised in hindsight that he didn't even work in the petrol station, he just talked to the petrol pump attendant and told him what we wanted. We weren't even on the motorway we wanted. On the return journey we realised that the motorway was just a straight run from the garage.

Later as we got nearer Viñales, we stopped at a junction without a sign and didn't know whether to go left or right, and we had to pick up another hitch-hiker. This guy again tried to get us to stay at his house, and tried to get us to agree to go with him to a cigar plantation the next day. At this stage we said that even if we got completely and utterly lost we wouldn't take another person into the car.

Viñales
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The valley around Viñales is absolutely breathtaking. It's formed by limestone hills with steep sides that emerge from the flat red earth. The hills are riddled with caves and we really enjoyed visiting a couple of them.

We went for a drink on the first night, and met an Irish couple, Eoghan and Yvonne, who were just out of Havana and had had the same experience of scams and hitch-hikers. We also talked about how none of us had managed to find the 'party' Cuba we'd heard so much about. Everywhere we'd been was so quiet. We arranged to meet them the next night.

The next night, we met for a meal and a few drinks and had a good laugh. Afterwards, with nothing happening in the town and our restaurant closing, we decided to head to a bar in a cave we'd visited earlier in the day, and which a friend of Yvonne's recommended. Her friend called it the salsa bar, and said it was great fun. We got a taxi, a 1953 Chevrolet, and the driver agreed to drive us out, wait and drive us back.

We arrived, and there was nobody there. Not a soul apart from bar staff. We ordered mojito cocktails, and they arrived with salt in them. They'd mixed it with the sugar by mistake.

They put on music, but there wasn't much we could do with nobody and no atmosphere. We wondered if all the party people were hiding in the caves to come out after the all clear when we'd gone.

A car arrived, looked in, thought better of it and headed off.

We decided to head back too, as there was no point in staying.

Veradero
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Our plan had been to go to Maria la Gorda, mainly on the strength of the photographs in the guidebook. But we discovered that there was only one hotel and it was expensive. People aren't allowed to have casas particulares in resorts. So we decided to go to Varadero instead.

We hadn't planned to go there, and it was a crazy route to have to go back through Havana and out the other side again. We drove through the torrential showers of Tropical Storm Noel, before it became a hurricane. It didn't really bother us much, although the streets we drove through in Havana were flooded, and we heard that the east of the country was badly affected.

We got through the city without much problem, but then got spectacularly lost when leaving the city through taking one wrong exit off an unsignposted roundabout.

Eoghan and Yvonne had told us that they calculated their journey from Havana to Viñales would take 2 hours, and 2 hours later they were still trying to get out of Havana.

Varadero is a tourist place. It's on a narrow sandbar that sticks out into the Straits of Florida. You're so close to the US, you can get Key West radio stations. It's currently off season, and most of the people there were Cuban.

We couldn't swim, because the seas were still rough from the storm, but we stayed in a reasonable hotel with mainly Cuban guests, and had a really good few days. The restaurants were actually cheap!

Back in Havana
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We're now back in Havana, and flying out tomorrow. Havana has always been bad news, and we're just keeping our fingers crossed it will be ok this time.

Thinking back over the two weeks, I have to say I'm disappointed. I've looked forward to visiting Cuba for years, and the stories I've heard from anyone that I know who have been were very positive. I thought I was coming to a place that was full of music and party and a people who'd found a way between the extremes of poverty and the materialism of the west.

But I've ended up disappointed. In all my travels I've never had such a strong feeling of being ripped off. Everywhere I go I feel like I have dollar signs over my head, and people are just wondering how they can scam me, or overcharge me, or force me to tip them.

Once that feeling gets in on you it saps your enjoyment of a place, and you end up suspicious of everyone. We were happy to give lifts to people when so many obviously need them. But the Havana scam and the constant hard sell made us stop. In the end I wouldn't even ask someone directions or to take a photo for us, because I'd feel they wanted something in return.

Our saviour has been the casas particulares. Once we got into people's houses we found them open and friendly and generous. And the meals there were excellent. But in any official interactions in hotels, restaurants, car hire office and shops, I found that in general you feel that people don't care and that they're just doing a job.

It's been an interesting experience, and I won't forget it. But we leave tomorrow and, frankly, we feel relieved.

Chau,

Éamon

Today's Headline in Granma: Countries refuse to support Bush's blockade