long time no see

Ernesto "Ché" Guevara


This goes out to those of you who have not lost trust that I will at some point or another update my blog...
Yes yes, I have been to Cuba! It seems like years ago, but yes I have spent the holidays on Fidels Island.
Well Christmas passed away, more or less unnoticed the only sings that reminded me of the season were the tacky Christmas trees that could be found in all Cuban households I have seen.
As living in a private home is the cheapest way to stay in Cuba, or so we were told, we rented a room with Dona Miriam and Don Gustavo for 25.- Cuban dollars. Yes you hear right, Cuban dollars! This currency CUC I believe the abriviation is, is called convertible dollar and is worth more than a US dollar and it is the currency foreigners have to use while spending their time in Cuba. As you can imagine this money makes your stay in Cuba or should I say on Cuba quite expensive. The Cubans themselves have their own money, the Cuban Peso which is not worth much (24 Cuban pesos translate into 1 CUC). We had a hell of a time finding out how and what we can pay in pesos to make our live a bit less expensive.
Oh I was talking about our acommodation chez Miriam... of these 25.- dollars (which are actually a monthly income of a police man in Cuba) the family can keep 10.- and 15.- go to the government. Viva el socialismo, viva Fidel.
Well you can imagine that we found some more of these businesses where the state actually gets a good deal out of the Cubans and more over the tourists who bring "hard" currency to the island.
I won't go on about how much I think Fidel is doing a good job (sure enough...) and tell you more about our Christmas activities.
btw. I met Mariele at the airport, we ran into eachother even though our planes were supposed to land at least 1 hour apart... after about 2 hours of waiting for her luggage we finally made it to our "casa particular" :) - home of the hippopotamo!
Here you see Mariele and myself with a Coco-Taxi, one of the many ways to spend your money in Habana.
Anyways, for 24th of Dec, Christmas Eve we were invited to eat with the family:
Snapshot of the family, (fltr) the Granpa, father of Miriam, the Granma, mother of Gustavo, Gustavo, the cook and housmaid, Miriam, the hippo who is in charge of making money.
Arroz con Moros (rice with beans and the obligatory 2 liters of pork grease... Imagine, the cubans do actually put porc fat over everything. After one week of eating in Cuba my stomach was on strike. I did not get any bug in Guatemala this time, but the food in Cuba.. well this is something else. I can now say that other than that they eat a lot of proteins, the Guatemalan cuisine is very healthy, well compared to Cuban cuisine :)
Here the pork meat... Did you know that the Cubans are not allowed to kill a cow? They go to prison for this for about 25 years as all cows are property of the state. If you have a cow in Cuba you can use the milk but you are not allowed to kill it or eat the meat. Only rich Cubans and foreigners can afford to buy beef so normal Cubans only dream of it...

Here a picture of myself sitting on the Malecon in Havanna.

Some impressions of Matanzas, a small place on the northern coast of Cuba, where we spent some time with Eliott and Papito.. I tell you I had the most surrealistic trip in my live with these guys.
Eliott lives with Miriam and Gustavo, he is from the US, has a book business and is studying witchcraft (woodoo and other kinds of magic) in Cuba. Papito works for Eliott and was our driver for the 3 days that we were on the road.
Papito (Alejandro), Eliot and myself in a Chinese restaurant in Habana, well the food is still the same (rice with beans and something with a lot of porc grease) but the interior design of the place was different.. well chinese.

The Ché monument in Santa Clara.




A friend I made in Santa Clara ...
And just a little impression of what the houses look like.

So this is all for today
promise to blog more often now
Mtfbwy