Back to La Habana and Vinales - Pina Colada

After a long bus ride I arrived at my old apartment very early in the morning slept on the couch until celia the 8 year old kicked me to the bed. However later in the day caught up with Pavel to go hunting for a new house as my old apartment has been without water for 5 days. Later Pavl and I met up with Jimmy. We watched some baseball, they are nuts for it over here. Right now there is like the world cup of baseball on, so everynight it is on the TV it can actually be quite a exciting sport but most of the time it is a little boring, a bit like cricket I guess. The next day I took a day tour to the Vinales vally (about 1.5 hrs out of Havana) which is really lovely and is made up of limestone cliffs, and caves. We also visited a cigar rolling factory. All good cigars are handrolled and although it was a little stange to watch people work it was quite facinating to see them being made and the importance of many of the properties of the cigar. We went on a little boat ride in a river that is in one of the cave which was kinda cool. It was quite strange being on one of these tours, it was my first day tour of this kind. Normally I would have preferred to go myself and spend more time there as it was quite a lovely area, but time did not allow it. Everyone on my tour was at least 55 years old, mainly european, they were all staying in 5 star hotels and were loaded with cash. Everywhere we stopped so many of these tourist buses with all the same kinds of people were rolling up. It was amazing, it was a little like a circus with souvenir stores everywhere (they even sell food stuffs that I have not seen in a normal shop here). I talked to a few of them about my travells and they were quite amazed by some of the things I had seen and done. It feels so strange to me because this tourism is so detached from the real world here it is amazing.

Had a quiet birthday I was on the tour for most of it, and then I got to talk to mum and dad which was great.

Tomorow I leave for Lima and I hope to have more time there to write more about my travells here as I have found them throughly enjoyable, challenging and rewarding at the same time. Alicia