Cuban Daze
Still trying to collect myself after a dazzling two weeks in Cuba, with 40 hard-drinking Norwegian socialists. Because of bad weather in Paris, I was rerouted to Toronto, where I spent a bad night on two chairs in the airport, staring out at banks of shovelled snow heaped by the runways and wondering how the hell I'd ended up so far from the Caribbean....The Norwegian socialists, however, were perhaps even unluckier: they ended up in a Eurodisney hotel just outside Paris!
We were reunited a day later in a place called Playas del Este to the East of Havana. The Norwegians were all charming, funny, friendly and intelligent. Polly, my room-mate and very old friend (and the reason I'd been invited), hadn't changed a bit....
Carry on reading if you want to see a photo!
I can't drone on about Cuba forever, so I'll just stick in a photo or two and burble...
Signs like this everywhere. This one appears to be in someone's front garden! I know it's all propaganda, but it made a great change from Coca Cola ads...
Searing heat. Thirty eight degrees one day.
Everyone seemed to grin a lot! Maybe it's the rum. I've visited other communist countries, but never one where the people seemed so happy. Surely it can't just be the weather...?
Visit to the Central Committee, where an extremely handsome and passionate man talked to us (in Spanish, with an interpreter) about the American Blockade. Fact I didn't know: in 1992 the US increased trade limitations to Cuba. If a ship from another country stops in Cuba nowadays (to deliver a cargo), it's then not allowed to visit the US for six months. The US handles 25% of world trade. Because of this, shipping companies now charge Cuba a vast amount to deliver cargoes, because they're risking being compromised by the US.
More another day! I'm so computer illiterate, it's taken me about an hour to upload one photo... But I have so much to say about Cuba, it will take a while to get it all off my chest...
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