Tareq on Tour: January 2009

Mexico began with trouble free border crossing, a comfy bus, and some tasty street food. And whilst many hardened travellers will tell you Cancun is a offensive tourist destination, we had a great time bedding down with the locals in the town centre, Corona in hand, by night and heading down to the beach on the 30 pence bus by day. And the sea is the most amazing blue we have seen yet, hopefully the whole Yucatan Carribean coastline is as good.

A day later and we were on the plane to Habana, Cuba. Wow! There really is too much to say about Cuba, good and bad, but the propaganda hits you straight away and most of it quite scary. The dictatorship quite simply has an explanation for any problem, past, present or future, the USA. And whilst this is forced down your throat on bill boards, in museums, and almost hourly on, so called educational, television programmes, it doesn't seem to wash with the locals who want for freedom of choice, speech or just plain old freedom . But then maybe the Castros are unwittingly playing into the hands of another American conspiracy theory? And how free is America, since their own government doesn't allow their citizens to visit Cuba and they can't even recount their votes? Cuban human rights seem questionable and then there's Guantanamo Bay?

The first noticable difference, from capatilism, to us was the vehicles all of which are used to death and beyond, and whilst it is wonderful to see the old dinosors chuging away they certainly aren't owned through choice. There is no chance of upgrading to a 2009 model since everyone earns $12 a month. You may think this is low but actually this is reflective of average earnings throughout our travels, but normally 99% of the population earns much less than this and 1% earn a shit load more.

Then there are the ration queues, the empty shelves, the rubbish food in resturants, the lack of work ethic, the double currencies, peso pizza and peso ice cream.

Our visit started in central Habana staying with the wonderful Ana, Andreas and family, and doing the sights.

Then we headed down to Trinidad, a laid back colonial town, timed well with a cultural festival. With beautiful beaches, class reef and sugar plantations added into the mix.

And back across to Vinales, tobacco growing country, small and quiet. I even managed to roll my own without the assistance of any virginal thighs

And returning to Habana, spending our last night on the 25th floor of the Habana Libre hotel at the Caberet Turqurno, watching a modern style salsa band. The opening of the roof only lasted a few minutes as the room turned into a scene from ghost busters due to the stormy weather outside.

We're now in back in Mexico, where we have met up with me mum and Jules and have two weeks to cruise around the Yucatan together. Then we fly to Chicago to meet up with Phil and Jay. So I'm not sure there'll be another blog till we hit British soil. See you then,
Tx

Having survived Christmas (as did this turkey

) we made our way across the border to San Ignacio in Belize, where we spent the afternoon walking the IxChel Jungle Medicine Trail and learning about all the uses of plants and trees, most of which we have casually passed by these past 9 months

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For New Years we decided to locate ourselves on Caye Caulker, a sunny isle in the Caribbean sea. And for new years eve we went out on a boat to the local reef for some snorkeling, swimming with sharks and rays, and watching the sun set with rum punch. The actual night was actually quite chilled, in a Caribbean kind of way, and the fireworks were out shadowed by Christmas with half of them exploding in the audience (obviously lacking the pyro skills of the Pearson/Greg duo).