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After 3 hours of mixups demonstrating the inefficiency of communism we finally got our hire car along with a 15 minute warning about the poor condition of the roads, the lack of street signs, and the police! I was a little scared, so we spent 45 mins looking for a street map before heading off. In the end there was nothing to worry about, the roads were almost empty and as long as we counted the number of streets well, we were fine and headed West.
Horse riding the next day. In typical cuban fashion we mentioned it to the couple we were staying with and they said they'd 'sort something out'.. Some man came up to the door the next day and said 'let's go' before walking ahead of us. After 15 mins we wondered if it was all a scam, when suddenly some horses appeared :-) It was a great day, although I discovered that horse riding is a lot more difficult, and hurts a lot more than it looks!
Horrible beach at Maria la Gorda but the coral and fish were fab. No sharks though
D and I diving - taken with a friend's underwater camera. The diving was great - although typically disorganised and with dodgy equipment. We saw black coral on a massive reef wall and went down to 30m, it was beautiful - saw a massive sting ray, barracudas and lots of tropical fish.
Friends around the dinner table. Serge & Andrea from Spain and Gregor and Richard from UK
Shelda feeling quite sick - had a little bit of food poisoning which peaked when we walked into a muggy cave, managed to vomit right in the middle of the cave. Wonder if it still smells?
... and this was the upgrade that they gave us! It worked but it lacked a lot of paint and all of the badges.
Coconut groves on the little back road between Las Terrasas and Vinales
We had no accommodation booked but planned to stay in 'casa particulares' which are rooms in private homes. Luckily we found a great one on our first night, it was gorgeous, the people were so friendly and the food was some of the best we ate. This is our dinner/ breakfast table.
We went to botanical garden specialising in orchids at Soroa where I saw the Tocororo, Cuba's national bird. He's blue and red and white - Cuba's national colours! How patriotic...
Not a condom - it's a portuguese man of war jellyfish. They have a stinger which is about 2ms long and very nasty.
Crabs! the road to maria la gorda was covered with crabs. They were everywhere - when we went for dinner we could hear them climbing on the tin roof, we had to board up the windows so they wouldn't get inside. I had a very touchy walk to the car in the dark.
Here's the tocororo.. such a great photo D. There is a little bird in there somewhere... the national bird of cuba.
A man with his cock - rooster that is for cock fighting. We saw them everywhere!
A tobacco drying hut, with some healthy looking roosters outside. Shelda - those are turkeys!
'Fat Mary' - the diving resort on the far far West coast. We stayed there for 3 nights to lay on the beach and do some diving. Was a lovely place with only about 50 people there (also about 20 yucky, scrawny cats).
We had lunch on the beach - it was mostly some of those red crabs from the road cooked up in chili with rice
I decided that climbing a coconut tree didn't look that hard. I learnt that it is.
We met some friends at Maria la Gorda who were staying with a local family - they invited us for dinner, and for the price £5 we had our best meal. This was the fish, caught by locals that day.
Typical Cuban country traffic - driving down the highway with horses and carts around is quite entertaining.
House