Cuba

More photos are here: http://dulceandkai.blogspot.com/

Havana
We arrived in Havana and stayed at Casa Lunass. The "hostels" in Cuba are not really hostel at all. Many people in Cuba rent out a room in their home and offer cooking services, and these places are called hostels or casa particulares. Casa Lunass was run by 2 very friendly, helpful women. They were able to tell us all about Havana and recommend several good casas to stay at in other cities around Cuba. We walked around the city to see the Plaza de la Revolution, Havana Viejo and Central Havana. We really enjoyed the culture and atmosphere of Cuba. It was very safe everywhere (compared to other Central and South American countries), and everyone was so nice and friendly. We were also amazed by the old buildings and all the classic 50's cars driving around the city. I think we must have taken more than 100 photos of just cars. :) That night, we went to a restaurant for dinner and on the patio of the restaurant a very talented local band was playing. They were truly amazing!

Playa Larga
We stayed at Casa Marietta, and our little house was directly on the water. The town was very tiny, but it was nice just to enjoy the beach. We had a great dinner at Casa Rosalita - the best grilled fish in Cuba! We went to Cueva de los Peces (about a 10 min drive from our casa) to do a little snorkeling. There were a few fish and some coral, but we heard there was a better spot in Trinidad so we planned to go again. We decided not to wait for a bus to get to Cienfeugos, and we took a taxi instead. The car was great - a 1951 Dodge with a Mitsubishi engine (according to the driver).

Cienfeugos
Loved the quiet town of Cienfeugos! A nice walkway along the water, beautiful old houses and churches. Kai tried "peso pizza" (street pizza cooked in a make-shift oven) for the first time here, and he was hooked! We also went through the painful bread buying experience. Apparently there are a lot of things in shortage here, including plastic bags and bread. We waited in line for about a half an hour before the freshly baked bread was ready to be sold. There was a queue a mile long outside the store, and I'm sure not everyone got a piece. It was unreal. We ran away from the hole-in-the-wall shop so excited to have scored a loaf of bread. We carried it around like a major award because we had forgotten to bring our own plastic bag.

Trinidad
A lovely little town. It's supposed to be one of the bigger cities in Cuba, but it's still pretty small. We went up the tower by the plaza and had a nice view of the city and the surrounding hills. We took a day trip out on a boat to do some more snorkeling. It was definitely better than Playa Larga. Lots of fish and colourful coral. The water was a little cold for the Florida girl though. :)

Viñales
Absolutely loved Viñales! It's small country town, probably only 1 km in length. We stayed at Villa Reiner (El Ñañe). This casa had great food, rocking chairs out front (for our beer and cigars at night) and hot water available all day (a necessity for showers). There were so many dogs on the streets that were literally starving. You could see every bone in their body. It was so sad. I found the skinniest dogs and fed them food everyday. We rented some bicycles one day and rode around the countryside. We saw the Mural de la Prehistoria , a 120 meter long painting on the side of the Mogote (limestone mountain) of Dos Hermanas. Then we biked up a very big hill to Hotel Los Jazmines. It was a bit touristy, but it had great views of the valley. Then we went to a couple of caves - El Palenque de los Cimarrones and Cueva al Indio. El Palenque was very small and again very tourisy, but we really enjoyed Cueva al Indio, where we got to take a boat ride through part of the huge cave. We watched the sunset at La Ermita hotel at the top of another hill behind our casa. We ended the day in our rocking chairs smoking our first cigar. :)
The next day we took a bus out to Cayo Jutias beach (about 1 hour from Vinales). Beautiful beach and a very relaxing day.
After our lazy day at the beach, we decided to do something a little more active. We took a 5 hour hike through the local farms and mogotes. We stopped at a local tobacco farm. The lady who lived there had most of her teeth missing and her fingers were stained form the tobacco, but she was very nice and explained how she grew the plants and made her own cigars. Then we walked to another cave, where we went inside with a flashlight to a pool at the end. Our guide wanted us to go swimming, but the water looked a little too creepy. It was so nice to spend the day away from all the cars, buses and gasoline fumes. Dinner was huge but delicious. I loved getting our homemade meals at our casa...I was actually able to get a little variety in my veggie meals and not just beans and rice. :)

Havana
Stayed at Casa Lunass again. Our last day before flying out to Colombia. We walked around Central and Old Havana again, to do lots of shopping. We walked along the Malecon by the water and enjoyed the beautiful sunset. We went back to the restaurant where we ate at the first night. Unfortunately the band we saw wasn't there, but we managed to get a CD of them. I tried some street spaghetti from Sanway for 50 cents, and it was surprisingly pretty tasty.
Overall, we loved this place and would love to come back again one day. The people were so nice and friendly, and it seemed like everywhere we went, we could hear music playing. Such a fun place!