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Day 11: Havana to New York, one day in a place they named twice
The last morning in Havana was spent running around trying to spend the last of our CUC, as they can’t be exchanged outside of Cuba. I tried, I really did, but the level of Cuban souvenirs is generally not great for carrying around and bringing back into Australia: too much wood and leather. All of the fridge magnets are either clay or wood: there are so very few metal magnets here. And here is a real kicker: it seems that this is a country that doesn’t do souvenir tea towels. Not one. We thought that there were also no snow globes, too. One last Havana thought: it seems the touts…
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Day 10-11: Mambo de la Luna, thoughts from the road
Snake eyes on the paradise, and we’ve got to go today. These are just road thoughts, a further attempt to pull together what I’ve experienced over the last 10 days. That sort or piece where any better writer would be able to neatly wrap things up in a paragraph, or an Anthony Bourdain show could sum things up well in a couple of lines and a decent final shot. Cuba has been challenging, that’s for sure. All travel is challenging, or at least it should be: there is no point going around the world just to experience what you have at home everywhere you go. For Cuba, some of the…
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Day 10: Mambo de la Luna: Trinidad, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, Havana
Our last full day in Cuba. Another wonderful breakfast at the casa before we hit the road. I don’t think I’ve described the breakfasts we’ve been getting, which have all been both substantial and great quality. The usual starter is a bowl or plate of fruit, which has consistently featured mango but can also have guava, pineapple, rock melon, orange, or banana. I’ve been loving the fresh fruit. Then comes some eggs, any way we like, but omelette has been a consistent choice, as we’ve also been given plates of cheese and ham. There’s also usually bread, and today we also had sweet, jam-filled biscuits that looked like dumplings or…
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Day 9: Mambo de la Luna, Salsa de la Casa, Trinidad de Cuba
Today was all about water. After a huge breakfast at our awesome casa, Hostal Ramirez aka Casa Leoslinda y Reinier, we were bundled into a taxi to be taken to Trinidad’s famed Playa Ancon, or Ancon beach. As beaches go, it’s nice. A bit touristy, but currently it’s the off-season so there’s probably not the same level of service, i.e. locals coming up and offering to get all manner of food, drink, whatever. In the two hours we were there, I was offered a lot of pizza, but only a couple of times, drinks (and the first time was when we were just arriving). The second offer was from a…
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Day 8: Mambo de la Luna, Camaguey to Trinidad
Historic Camaguey, or Port Principe. The tour started with an old church, including an offer to tour the crypt. I took the tour, hoping to get a glimpse of some relics, maybe a body part of a saint or two, or a chunk of the true cross. Sadly no such luck. They had three rooms open, each with some interesting items. The first had a candle presented to the church by Pope John Paul II, the glasses of a priest that is held in high regard the locals, some other items like 17th century art that has been found under the church. Through a very low doorway into the second…
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Day 7: Mambo de la Luna, Santiago de Cuba to Camaguey
Cuba, like many nations, could use a good highway system for the 1000km from Santiago to Havana. Maybe one day, if a method of recycling plastic drink bottles into roads pans out, as there is plenty of the former and less of the latter. They have a plan, and the first few kilometres out of Santiago de Cuba is a generally solid six-lane highway, but after a while it generally turns into a Scottish B road or WA country highway, one fairly narrow lane each way. Only with horses and bicycles. Cuba is, I’m told, possibly the only carbon neutral country in the world, and they achieve this partly through…
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Day 5-6: Mambo de la Luna, Santiago de Cuba
Sitting on a rooftop dining area, the scene of possibly my best cuban meal so far, condensing two days into one in the hope I’ll get all caught up. It’s not that the days are blurring together, but right now, on the other side of the International Date Line, I really have no idea what day it is, and time is certainly flying by. Yesterday started with the last minute packing, the usual breakfast of coffee, omelette, juice and fresh fruit, and then we were on the road to the airport. While Cuban traffic can be a little chaotic, with random roadworks, and horse drawn carts to dodge, I’m yet…
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Mambo de la Luna Day 4+: Havana still
Today was the big Havana tour day, taking in the old and the new cuidad. The old cuidad is UNESCO recognised, free from cars, and quite beautiful in an under restoration kind of way. So after meeting our trusty Beberli, it was off to stroll around basically where I’ve strolled around for the last couple of days, but this time with someone to explain what I’ve been seeing. I could go into great detail boring you about all the things about the history of Havana, but suggest you’re better off reading Wikipedia or something. Basically, in very condensed form, Havana is a semi-strategic isthmus with water on three sides, making…
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Mambo de la Luna Day 3+: Havana still
Today the tour started. Part of the deal for transiting through the US was the requirement to show that my time in Cuba was to support the Cuban people, i.e. getting out each day with an itinerary and not just sipping mojitos in a resort. Today’s mission involved a tour of the Havana Club rum museum, just around the corner from our Casa. So we met our guide for the tour, Beberli, and went for a walk. Cuba and rum go back a long way, as the first things the european colonists did was wipe out the local indigenous population, chop down the trees, and plant sugarcane. As with all…
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Mambo de la Luna: day 2+, Habana
I think it’s technically day 4, but I get confused from all the crossing of date lines, and with my body clock otherwise a bit messed around. My phone thinks it’s Saturday 6 July, my laptop thinks it’s Sunday 7 July, and my brain thinks that it’s hard to be in Havana and not drink. But before I get to today, I should probably cover yesterday, but not the way the band at the lunch restaurant covered “Yesterday”. The ultra long haul Singapore to Ewok, sorry, Newark (airport code EWK) was overall pretty good. I made sure to drink lots of water, so I hit the ground well hydrated if…
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Mambo de la luna: Day 1+, the longest day
I’m a little bit north of the Aleutian Islands, a little south of the Bering Strait, the International Date Line is possibly somewhere below me, and am just over halfway through the longest flight of my life. And not just my life, many lives, as I’m on what is currently the longest non-stop commercial flight in the world, heading from Singapore to Newark, approximately 16,700 km. It’s been a while between trips, and without going into it, between KL and now I have just been working far too hard. This is just to put things in perspective: I’m way out of practice at putting my thoughts into words, so apologies…
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Day last: KUL to PER
Woke up far too early after far too little sleep. It takes a special person to get a good night’s sleep when they have an early morning flight, and I ain’t that person. Checked out of the hotel, and again my grab code to sentral station didn’t work so I didn’t need to go with that option, and it was only 8MYR or so anyway. The awesome thing with flying Malaysia Airlines is that I could check in to my flight at Sentral station, dropping my suitcase, getting my boarding pass, and being able to skip all that once the KLIA express took me to the airport. Then it was…
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Day 7: KL, in a day
Today was the catchup, touristy day, where I tried to cram in just about as many of the KL landmarks that I could. While I’ve been enjoying my time in KL, I’ve generally missed most of the postcard places, and with only one day left it was time to fill in some gaps. First stop of the day (after breakfast, a dosa with condiments at a random streetside eatery) was the Batu caves just north of KL, and by just north I mean these are about 20 minutes’ drive in early morning traffic. The Batu caves are a big Hindi thing, there’s the postcard huge statue of the god of…
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Day 6: KL, sticking to it
Today was a fairly solid reversal of fortune compared to yesterday. I decided not to overextend myself and to check out a few more places local, and on the whole it paid off. I kicked off with doing my laundry, by which I mean going to where I got my last clothes washed, finding them closed, and walking across the road to a different, less swanky place. These folks charged me 10MYR, and told me to come back in a couple of hours. Having been quite haphazard in my eating patterns, I decided to make a concerted effort today to eat 3 meals, and to be approximately regular in doing…
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Day 5: Of markets and malls
Today was a day of shopping fails. Today, I have to say, I hate the shopping in KL. Remember yesterday’s coffeeshop power outage? Turns out this got me twice, as the laundry I dropped off yesterday wasn’t ready due to the same power issues. And while we’re talking about power issues, I discovered my room’s mini-fridge didn’t work, forcing me to sadly throw out the cooking class leftovers as they were at the wrong temperature for who knows how long. I headed out this morning for the Amcorp mall flea market, a place where all manner of weird and wonderful trinkets and knick knacks and second hand things and gifts…
