Christmas here in Cuba isn’t that big of a deal which I guess is something to give thanks for this holiday season! Everything was open and in full swing, including La Cabaña, and old apothecary, the meat market, and of course the usual crew of buskars getting their busk on.
Havana is one of those cities where you can literally just wake up one morning, pick a direction, start walking and by mid-afternoon your camera battery is dead from taking so many darn photos. A good problem to have I guess.
Spent the day wandering around La Habana Vieja taking in all the sights and sounds of this city that seems to be preserved in the late 60’s. Such a trip.
It’s hard to believe it’s already been a week here on the island, which means the trip is halfway over. The next half will be spent exploring all that Havana has to offer. The drive back here was quite interesting in that three-quarters of the drive was down the single freeway in the country — a freeway with a total of 3 lanes, and no divider. So you’ve got a lane for eastbound traffic, a lane for westbound traffic, and a lane in the middle for both eastbound and westbound traffic in the form of a mutual head-on passing lane. Not exactly the safest road in the world, but that’s what you get when the USSR pulls out of the project halfway through completion.
After almost 7 days of nothing but pork, rice, beans & crappy pizza, I headed over to a little slice of paradise called Cayo Santa Maria. Up here in the north you’ll find nothing but 5-star resorts along white sand beaches and crystal blue waters. It’s also the one place on the island where you’ll actually find a decent variety of food, so if traveling to Cuba you may want to come here halfway through your trip which is exactly how it ended up working out for me. There’s not much else here besides the beaches, and it’s far cry from the REAL Cuban culture. Here you’ll find a bunch of foreign tourists and not much else. It’s a good spot to take a break and enjoy some comforting amenities of home before getting back into the thick of things.
