Havana Part I

Here's the beginning of blogging from our Cuba trip two weeks ago. I'm splitting up Havana because...we saw so much and I don't want to overwhelm. :)

After a short night in Mexico City we hopped on a Cubana Airlines flight to Havana. We had been told that Cuba wouldn’t stamp our passports since we were American, which turned out to be true but the process what still quite strange. We had to go up to a window one person at a time where we were not spoken to but motioned to stand in front of a camera without smiling to have our picture taken. After some intense stamping of various other documents we were buzzed through a mysterious door to the darkness beyond…hoping the rest of the family would follow. Eventually, everyone did.

We spent the next three days exploring Havana, wandering, eating drinking, listening to music, talking to people, and of course, taking pictures.

We were staying right on the Malecon, which is an 8 mile seawall that runs along the Havana waterfront. It’s a popular hangout place for the locals, especially at night. The second morning we were there Matt went out for a run and discovered that he wasn’t the only one: there was an actual race going on with hundreds of Cubans running past him the other direction and wondering why the crazy foreigner was going the wrong way.

We wandered down the prada, a large street with a park down the middle of it and had an excellent lunch at a small restaurant right along the side. We walked miles and miles over three days and saw many things. I’ll just follow with pictures and some captions.

Capitol building

Cuban rum. So good.

La Floridita, one of Hemingsways favorite spots

Almost everything in Cuba is owned by the state. The hotels, the restaurants, the stores, the taxis, everything. Two of the only ways to have private enterprise were through having a casa particular or a paladar. A casa particular is a house where someone rents out 1-2 rooms to tourists. It’s usually about $25/night and they are allowed to rent out no more than two rooms, which they pay high taxes on. A paladar is a restaurant in someones home, where they are allowed to have no more than 12 tables. The small scale of these businesses means that almost everything the tourist sees is state owned, but we were able to hunt down a number of very good paladars throughout the trip.
 
 

The fam, in front of Che

As a result of the illegality of private enterprise and the fact that very few Cubans have much discretionary income, there were very few cafes, minimarts, grocery stores, or sidewalk stands. Throughout our walks when we found ourselves hungry or thirsty it was often a challenge to find a place to satisfy these needs. I don’t think we actually saw a grocery store the entire trip. Not to mention the lack of American products or advertising. Fascinating.

A Teaser

Ok, so I'm trying to get caught up on school work and real blogging is going to have to wait a bit. But here's a few more pictures from our time in the city of Trinidad to tide all the eager family members over.

Back in the U.S.A.

Made it home! Had a lovely trip! More to follow...

We're Off

We 're off tomorrow for a quick overnight in Portland before we leave Friday for the big trip to Cuba.

We don't expect to have any form of communication with 'home' while we are gone. Internet access is restricted and from what I understand U.S. e-mail cannot be accessed from there. Plus that's just kind of asking the U.S. government to notice you are there right? We'll catch everyone up when we get back.

We fly through Mexico City and arrive in Havana on Saturday. We'll spend four nights in Havana, two nights in Trinidad, and two nights in Cayo Coco. Havana will be seeing historical sights along with music and dance, Trinidad is more historical, and Cayo Coco is three days of all-inclusive bliss on a beautiful island with scuba diving. yay. Should be a great trip!

Check with Customs & Border Patrol if you don't hear from us in a few weeks. ;)

Silence?

Why the silence you ask?

Well, I (Mackenzie) started my MBA last week.

What? Since when? you ask.

Uh...I dunno. I have been avoiding it for a long time and finally decided that it was a neccesary evil and I should get it over with.

So anyways, life has been taken over by textbook reading, paper writing, and discussion questions. I will get used to it and take my life back again. But until then...



:)

Casablanca, Morocco

Matt and I were flying out of Casablanca (a different city than we flew into) and despite the fact that the movie 'Casablanca' is all that many people think of when they hear Morocco, it wasn't even filmed there! From what we had heard it wasn't much of a nice place to visit at all! Accordingly, we left early in the morning from Essaouira and spent just one afternoon and evening there before our flight out. Our main destination was the Hassan II Mosque which is the second largest mosque in the entire world, second only to Mecca. It is truly impressive and is one of the only mosques that non-Muslims are allowed into – on special tours of course. It is built on reclaimed land out over the sea and is full of the intricate designs and tilework.

We had a flight out at midnight that night, a quick stop in Frankfurt and a lovely direct flight back to Seattle on Lufthansa. It was a great trip, and we had SO much fun seeing and doing so many new things with such lovely people. We're taking suggestions on what the next trip should be. :)

Essaouira, Morocco

Our last chunk of time in Morocco was spent on the coast in Essaouira. It was a lovely four days of relaxation, sunshine, beach, and some different food for a change! Matt & I spent a lot of time wandering around the city exploring. We took walks on the beach. We had fresh squeezed grapefruit juice…yum! We explored the port which was teeming with fisherman, smelly fish and cool boats.

One day the four of us drove down the coast a bit to a more deserted, pretty beach and spent the afternoon lounging there and playing in the Atlantic. We also saw the famous ‘argan tree goats’, which climb trees! We had heard they were mostly in the Agadir area, which was further south and we didn’t feel like driving to, but discovered a few in the trees on our trip down the beach. The environment is extremely dry and they don’t have anything to eat except for the fruit on the Argan trees, which they have to climb to reach. Thought it was pretty interesting.

There was seafood there, which was a wonderful change from the never ending tagine and cous cous. We gorged ourselves on calamari and other fish things which we could not identify for lack of French vocabulary.

Our last day we went to a ‘hammam’. A ‘real’ hammam is a traditional Moroccan communal bath house where people go to bathe and scrub themselves. We went to the touristy version, which was really more like a spa day. We got to sit in a sauna, be bathed and completely exfoliated, and finish up with an hour long massage. It was delightful! So nice and relaxing. By ‘exfoliated’ I really mean that some Moroccan lady takes a scotch-brite pad to your entire body. Pretty strange but actually felt great and left you feeling amazingly clean.

**Coming up, our very last day in Morocco: Casablanca