Author archive
17 October 2008
After a large part of the day in Camaguey, including an interesting visit to the doctor for Kim, we moved on. We travelled by a Viazul bus from at 1630 Camaguey in the afternoon, bound for Sancti Spiritus. This ride, along with other bus trips were booked online via the Viazul bus company website. With […]
17 October 2008
Above: Public transport in Camaguey. Eating in Cuba We’ve had many stories of Cuban food being really bad. However, our experience has only been positive. Maybe things have changed … we haven’t found any of those old state-run restaurants churning out greasy pork dishes that we’ve read about. We’ve had wonderful meals in restaurants, guesthouses, […]
16 October 2008
Camaguey provided a first glimpse into a provincial Cuban town. Pretty cobbled streets, churches, squares. And great food! We stayed at a casa particular again in Camaguey. Our host in Havana had arranged this one for us, along with the others on the rest of our itinerary. Booking ahead in Cuba is difficult from the […]
15 October 2008
Above: Our Cubana Antonov 24 aircraft was like a sauna onboard. Emirates Airlines is famous for its onboard shower for First Class passengers on board its Airbus A380. Today we flew on Cubana from Havana to Camaguey on an old Russian propeller plane (Antonov 24), scheduled for 1700. We had some technical difficulties on the […]
15 October 2008
Apart from the lack of shops, there are signs that Cuba isn’t the most affluent nation: The restaurant in Chinatown churns out the best cream caramel in cut-off cola cans. The restaurant has cut your paper napkin for use by two diners. Car like the 1955 Bel Air still cruise the streets. B&W TVs still […]
14 October 2008
We spent more of our time in Old Havana today … that’s the newer area next to Historic Havana. Kim needed to check his email … and internet cafes were nearly non-existent. We settled for an outlet inside the Capitolio (former State Capitol) for about USD6 per hour. While that seems pricey to us, spare […]
13 October 2008
Habana Vieja or Historic Havana is a pretty historic district that is relatively well-restored and is also the centre of all things touristy. It is about 20 minutes walk (but a strong contrast) from the crumbling Old Havana which we are in. In the real Old Havana, many of its residents crammed into three-storey apartments […]
12 October 2008
We have a guesthouse “Casa Novo” in the old part of Havana which was prebooked on the internet. The casa particular was run by a cardio-thoracic surgeon who has access to the internet at work, in order to accept bookings from the outside world. Otherwise internet is prohibitively expensive! The buildings here are old but […]
12 October 2008
We only had a couple of hours in the morning to check-out the sights of Nassau before flying to Havana at 1245. The feel is a strange mix of Caribbean, British and American. Cars are equipped with either right or left hand drive, but all drive on the British side of the road. We didn’t […]
11 October 2008
As there are limited flights between the USA and Cuba (and only for people with special qualifying circumstances), I had to fly to Nassau, Bahamas to access Cuba. But from Boston, I had to fly American Airlines to Miami first at 1150. When I landed at 1510, I looked out for Kim who would be […]