Mexico City

Our flight from Havana went through Mexico City so we decided to stop off for a few nights and see what the smoggy capital city had to offer.

Being the extremely organised person I am, I had booked us into a hostel months in advance on a half price deal - a private room at Hostel Amigo for only NZD $20 per night including a breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup!

The only problem with Hostel Amigo was finding it. Our taxi driver let us off on a random street and told us to walk "that way" and without internet in Cuba I hadn't written down the address! Asking the locals where Hostel Amigo was proved fruitless as we were directed to about 5 different hostels, most likely because they thought we were asking: "Where is the hostel, friend?". 

We decided to head to the National Museum of Anthropology the following morning. This was the No. 1 tourist attraction on TripAdvisor and the route involved walking through Chapultepec Park so very scenic. We arrived at what we thought was the museum and stayed for about two hours browsing and couldn't help but wonder why on earth there was so many rave reviews about a museum where almost all of the displays were in Spanish. I also noted multiple times throughout the visit that it felt like we were in a castle, but Alex assured me we would be visiting the Chapultepec Castle later that day. After lunch we reviewed the map of the park again and realised that in fact we had been in the castle, and that the museum of Anthropology was further down the road - hilarious.

Just colour coding myself with the castle

Look at the size of that waist!!

Looked like it was out of Cinderella! Such ornate detail (to think we were in the Anthropology museum! Honestly).

Castle overlooking the city

Beautifully manicured gardens at Chapultepec Castle

The museum of Anthropology was gigantic, and we did get a little bored by the end of it. We would recommend tackling this at the start of the day. We had put too much energy into the palace and my conjunctivitis had reached boiling point by 4pm at which point Alex had to guide me around whilst I just closed my eyes, my very own guide dog. Our favourite section was the first one which featured all those 'Homo-.....' which were us before we became Homo Sapiens.

Lucy - an ancestor to all of us

Finger included for scale purposes. Our audio tour advised us that this was a pottery example from way back, we both burst out laughing - this honestly looked like a small piece of hard dog poo.

In search of a good coffee we decided to explore La Condesa the next day and came across a cool little farmers market and dog walking park. Whilst wandering back to the subway we found a little patio that had been set up as a market for the day and decided to order some ceviche from the pop up restaurant there. Oh my goodness it was amazing, possibly the best meal we had the entire time we'd been in Mexico. Needless to say we ordered another as well as some prawn tacos which did not disappoint either.

Being a Saturday we stupidly thought that the metro wouldn't be too busy, boy we were wrong. The crowds were so intense - we were jam-packed and when the train stopped at a station we thought surely no one else could possibly fit in here when what could only be described as a Mexican rugby scrum came tearing through the doors. Needless to say for the next ride I moved into the allocated women & children carriage and let Alex deal with the rugby scrum alone.

Next up - off to NYC!

xx

Varadero

After staying in Casa de Particulars throughout our time in Cuba, we decided to treat ourselves to two nights in an all inclusive resort in Varadero at the end of our trip. Varadero is like Cuba’s Cancun, and normally we would be a little adverse to dedicating part of a holiday to a cheesy destination like this... However by the time we left Trinidad we were getting very excited about the prospect of minimal lengthy Spanish conversations (in which we understood very little), and the charade games you play with the owners are just endless.

Alex partaking in a scheduled beach volley ball game. He made the most of the free sports activities on site also playing football each evening and made friends with a lot of English chaps staying at the resort.

"Mmmmm hot dogs on the beach"

The pool at the spectacular Blau Varadero

We walked in and were offered a glass of champagne on arrival (more likely sparkling wine to be honest but all the same!), and with 15 minutes to spare on the lunch buffet we sped down to the poolside lunch restaurant. 

Spending the afternoon poolside with an array of delicious beverages we noticed quite a few fatty families on holiday. As well as the restaurants with set meal times, there are snack shacks with things like fries, burgers and hot-dogs available between meals. 

That evening we were seated in the hotels auditorium at bang on 9.45pm to watch the Michael Jackson tribute show. We had actually spotted him sampling the dinner buffet earlier, and top marks for the costume department - he looked great. Shame about the audio quality though, the sound was terrible, he only lip-synced and the whole thing was just bizarre. The largely Eastern European audience seemed to be loving it though with huge rounds of applause being had, and one grey haired tubby lady came running from the bar as we were ducking out yelling to her husband who was trailing behind “It’s Billy Jean, HURRY!!” - golly if only these people knew how good the live music in authentic Cuba was!

Yes this hotel was ridiculous, but the bed was amazing. After two weeks - no make that 5 weeks - in springy, hard excuses for mattresses we slept like little babies in our super king with silent air conditioning and black out curtains.

The foyer at Blau Varadero

Odd scene whilst entering the dining room for 'Themed dinner night' - the theme was Italian, but there appeared to be a welcome team dressed in Grecian costume. The punter speaking to them with the glasses on was asking these poor team members why they were dressed in Grecian costume if the theme was Italian...

Due to the never ending feasting we scheduled in a gymnasium visit for the morning, which proved harder for me than I could have imagined. Within 5 minutes on the bike at only a 2 out of 10 resistance I was dying. Alex tried to coerce me into ‘spotting’ him, to which I refused, largely due to knowing I had no ability whatsoever to hold anything near the weight he was attempting to ‘press’. 

We're not sure if we would stay in an all inclusive hotel again. By the end of our two night stay we felt rather ill and we hadn't even been indulging that much! I don't know how people did it for a week or so at a time, and to be honest it would have been a bit boring to have been there for longer than we were.

We ended our stay in Cuba in Havana back at Casa Lilly, and had after asking our taxi driver where he learnt his impeccable English he told us the amazing story of his family. His parents and brother had made a raft out of old car tyres and tarpaulins and sailed it successfully from Havana to Miami. The US have an interesting policy titled: 'Wet foot, dry foot' (more details here) which essentially means any Cuban who makes it onto US soil can apply for residency. Absolute miracle that they made it there on what sounded like a very poor excuse for a boat! Our driver didn't go with his family as he has children in Cuba - but his mum started sending him books written in English so he is almost entirely self-taught and always looking for opportunities to converse in English with tourists to improve. I won't go into the the rest of his story as he told us a taxi driver had divulged a lot of information to two German tourists a couple of years back, who then uploaded a video of the secret recording they'd made to YouTube and now that taxi driver is in prison for speaking ill of the government. Poor guy!

Sunset on our last night in Havana

Trinidad

Trinidad is a beautiful historic town that has been recognised by Unesco as a world heritage site. The streets in the historic area where we stayed were cobbled and sounds of horse hooves clopping down the street are jumbled with the various live music acts playing at the bars & restaurants. Our casa there, Hostal Rintintin, was located just off the plaza in the Historical Centre and had a rooftop dining / seating area where you could watch the sun set in the evenings - beautiful!

Morning view from our casa's rooftop terrace

A dilapidated building in town that had advertisements letting us know that it would be one of the finest hotels in Trinidad within the next few years.

With a 9.30am tourist steam train departure in mind we arose uncharacteristically early for breakfast. Our previous casa owners had been superbly on time with every meal so with a 9.15am arrival time at the train station in mind we ordered breakfast for 8.30am. We're not sure why we didn't assume that the previous owners were the exception to the rule given the pace of life in Cuba, so when it finally arrived at 9am and we wolfed it down and started running down the road to find the station. In true Cuban style the train only leaves on days when a minimum of 15 people turn up. Running in, sweating, at bang on 9.30am we were clapped in by the anxious 13 passengers who had turned up before us and who thought until that moment that they would need to activate Plan B for the day’s activities.

Travelling on the historic steam train throughout the countryside was very fitting. We each got a chance to ‘drive’ the train, and blow the horn.

View from the steam train

Feeling excited after realising the horn was my doing

Local kids chasing after the train, it was unclear whether they were just excited or trying to sell us something

Unfortunately we left our beloved Lonely Planet book on a chair at breakfast** so we had to stumble through the ‘tour’ without it. Both of us had envisaged arriving at a huge mansion like property that had previously operated as a sugar plantation, and checking out the old mill and perhaps an accompanying museum of sorts? We arrived at our first stop with 1.5hrs allocated and proceeded to a huge tower to climb - which to our dismay was the last remaining element of the plantation. The tower was pretty amazing though, so many flights of tiny wooden stairs with multiple outlook points where the owners of the plantation could observe their slaves at work.

** Note: the whereabouts of the book was only realised after an approximately 30 minute long investigation that felt not too dissimilar to a scene from Criminal Minds - retracing our steps and establishing the real blame for the book misplacement. I am pleased to report it was his fault.

Historic tower used to watch the slaves at work on the plantations

Estate to the right of this picture was were the owners of the plantation used to live. It is now an overpriced restaurant.

Observation windows up the tower, feel like these observers must of used some form of binocular contraption as there is no way they could see people that clearly from up here!

We spent the afternoon in the flashiest hotel in Trinidad watching the Champions League Final. Even though I am not a huge football fan the game was pretty exciting to watch, and heading out to grab some wine on our way home we ran into the locals celebrating in the plaza - free rum shots for all!

That evening we headed to La Botija for some delicious pasta and cocktails and to kick off an  evening enjoying the live music scene in Trinidad. The band at La Botija all looked around our age and were the warm up act for some Cuban celebrity that crowds had gathered for, posters in hand awaiting his signature. 

Next we headed to Casa de la Musica - an open air amphitheatre where there is a free live salsa extravaganza every evening. The cubans are amazing dancers, and it's quite entertaining to watch the European tourists getting pulled up to dance with the locals. Admittedly our few salsa lessons in Auckland are long forgotten apart from the most basic step. The Pina Coladas were terrible though so we decided to head up to the nightclub in a cave. Entrance fee of $3 CUC included a free (very strong) Mojito - what a bargain! The line at the entrance was completely silent, no noise from down below at all and lining up with Trinidad’s 16 - 25yr old population we didn’t know if we were just unfashionably early or what, but as we made our way down the music became louder and you enter a gigantic opening which is a full-on club. DJ booth perched up top in the rock with a glass window looking out, huge plasma screens playing sexy latino music videos to accompany the beats, and more LED lights than you could shake a stick at! The punters even smoke in here, not sure if there were any smoke alarms installed but definitely another situation in which the travel smoke alarm I plan on inventing could come in handy.

Don't mind a glass of Rose up on this rooftop terrace in the evening!

At the nightclub in a cave

The next day after a leisurely, late breakfast we headed off to sample some of Cuba’s famous health system. I unfortunately had conjunctivitis so a visit to the doc was in order. Cuba has 1 qualified doctor per 170 people - surely one of the highest rates in the world! As a result of the USA trade embargo against Cuba, Cuba and Venezuela have become close and have started an 'Oil for Doctors' programme. Qualified Cuban doctors are being sent to work in Venezuela in exchange for free oil being sent to Cuba. An Al Jazzera article quoted that up to 90,000 barrels of oil were being sent each day in exchange for the services of up to 30,000 doctors. More here.I can report that the service was super efficient, and medicines in tow we headed out to Playa Ancon for the day (UPDATED: the medicine was crap and my eyes didn't get better for like two whole weeks until I got some super eye drops from an overpriced doctor in the USA). 

Playa Ancon - looks nice doesn't it? Don't be fooled.

Although Playa Ancon had a superb write up in the Lonely Planet, it was nothing compared to the beautiful beaches in Mexico. Seething with sea grass and sinking sand, the ice creams available to purchase were all melted and I just wasn’t feeling it. Thankfully our trusty taxi driver had agreed to meet us between the hours of 4 - 5pm so at 3.59 I located him just in the nick of time before the sky burst with torrential rain. This taxi was really on it’s last legs. Alex noted that every single aspect of the car looked as though it could fall apart at any minute. Water seemed to be coming through the roof, doors, windows and then it started flooding the front passenger seat - pouring in and sloshing around we could not stop hysterically laughing at this crazy situation of a car flooding. Suffice to say we gave the poor guy a tip when we got out, hopefully he made it home OK. 

Note: seriously cracked windscreen in torrential rain

Next stop Varadero to enjoy a couple of days on the beach to finish off our stay in Cuba!

Cienfuegos

Cienfuegos

We stopped into Cienfuegos for a night en route to Trinidad to break up a super long bus trip. It took 8 hrs to get to Cienfuegos from Vinales, so by the time we had arrived we were well into grumpy bus trip mode after disturbed naps and disagreements on whether it was socially acceptable for Alex to practice his Spanish audiobook lessons on the bus.

The city has a lot of Historical French architecture as Cienfuegos was settled by French immigrants to Cuba. There are a lot of beautiful sights to look at, but we found the tourist touts pretty annoying (despite the Lonely Planet advising us the town was largely free of them!). As we only spent the day in town I will just do a little photo essay below for you all.

View from the top of a hotel in town

Watching an afternoon boxing lesson

Just hanging out after school

Spotted a few marjuana plants growing outside this casa

Sunset paddle off the Punta Gorda

View from the far end of the Punta Gorda

Swimsuit model

Alex with our casa owner outside Casa Azul, super friendly and just across the road from the bus station

Our bicycle rickshaw driver mentioned when we were on board that Cienfuegos had a large problem with prostitution - whilst quickly looking through Cienfuegos' Wikipedia page I found the below exert, quite interesting!

Before 2003 Cienfuegos had a reputation for teenage prostitutes. Girls would skip school to go to the airport three times a week for the flights from Canada and meet Canadian men. Beginning in 2003 the police cracked down on prostitution and now Cienfuegos has a reputation for the most vigorous anti-prostitution police patrolling in Cuba (and there are no longer flights from Canada). After dark be careful at nightclubs, restaurants, or on the streets; simply asking an innocent young woman for directions could get her arrested. Don't bring a Cuban guest into your casa unless she signs the guest book; several home owners lost their homes because tourists brought "girlfriends" home for the night. If a woman is arrested twice in a year for being with a tourist she is fined. If she's arrested three times she goes to prison for four years. (Tourists are usually not arrested or punished.)

Next up, Trinidad!