Wowee!! Cuba

Travelling through Cuba on our bus has been a fantastic experience so far. We have been able to stop when we want at interesting places usually without other tourists ... not that there are many around. There are a lot of horse drawn vehicles around , actually most farmers are still using oxen to pull their ploughs. Horses are certainly the main mode of taxis in the country. Their staple crops seem to be sugar cane which was one of their main exports but of course since the American embargo they are struggling ..but that is another story.The feeling here is very patrioticand of pulling together as one people. The scenery is stunning from plains of crops to the royal palms .. their national tree with huge dairy herds grazing always with a white heron on their back or by their side.

On the way to our next stop we visited a very high tower that was built to oversee the slaves bought in from Haiti and other neighbouring islands. Santiago de Cuba home of the revolution in Cuba. We arrived late evening in what looked like a fairly scary place. Throughout Cuba we are staying in Casa de Particulares. A quick explanation of how this works is needed here. We have a mother home that the bus pulls up to. We are talking about huge homes here even if they are rundown on the outside. They are decorated inside just like most of your grandparent´s homes.. lots of fake flowers and china ornaments. The places are usually around some sort of a courtyard. Huge rooms accommodating a lot of family members and of course us their guests. As we sit down our ¨mums and or dads¨come to pick us up to take us in pairs to our host home for the duration of our stay. The other word you would use would be a homestay. This is where we need our spanish because they cook our meals usually breakfast and dinner, so we need to order what we would like and at what time. We have never travelled this way before . It is fun. Our rooms are comfortable ...we have the matrimonial usually with at least a fan which is needed here as it is quite hot and humid though not as hot as some parts of Central America.

We quite often meet up for drink or dancing after and now we know how to salsa after 4 lessons.. I think we actually need another 4 as we are not very articulate.

Nick at a Salsa Lesson. Did he learn anything though?