The strangeness of Havana

Before I went to Havana, the capital of Cuba, a good friend of mine said to me, 'It's not what you expect'. This was a remark I didn't really consider....until I'd experienced it.

There are a few things I learnt very quickly - don't go without a guidebook, it's probably not the best place to travel alone, don't go if you can't speak any Spanish and don't expect to be welcomed by the general populations. I think most Cubans make the assumption that if you're white, you are an American and therefore you are viewed with some disdain. A lot of the time I felt like they would happily take my money, but I didn't exactly feel like a wanted visitor to their country. I make it sound really bad - let me explain.

Firstly, Cuba has no hostels - not so great when you're travelling on your own. The options for accommodation are resort style hotels, which are expensive and crawling with American tourists, or casas. Casas are Cuban family homes where the owners rent out rooms. These are government regulated and heavily taxed. Staying in a casa is a cheaper and a much more authentic accommodation experience in Cuba. I stayed in a beautiful house with a lovely couple. They spoke almost no English, so my Spanish was really tested and we didn't exactly sit around swapping our life stories - unfortunate as I'm sure they would've had some interesting experiences to share. When I first arrived, there was no-one else staying there, I had no map and they had given me directions to Plaza la Revolucion and the tourist bus in Spanish. But being the savvy traveller that I am, I managed to get there ok. My casa was located in Havana Vedado, which is well out of the main touristy area of Old Havana - a good place to go out at night apparently, but definitely not frequented by many Westerners. Walking around by myself, I got a lot of attention - especially from men. I got stared at, hissed at, kissed at and whistled at. This is something I have experienced all over South America, being a blond, white woman travelling on my own, but I found it to be by far the worst in Cuba, which was something I didn't expect.

I quickly discovered however, that Havana, although a tourist destination, does not cater particularly well for tourists. They have one of those hop-on-hop-off tour buses that goes around town on three different routes, however the stop where I boarded the bus had no route information and when I asked on the bus, they said they had no printed route maps. So I was wondering how I was going to work out where I could go and when, because I didn't have a guide book either. When I got to Havana Veija (Old Havana), it took me quite some time to find somewhere I could get a map from, and I had to pay for it.

Another thing about Havana is that it is almost impossible to self-cater, or to eat very healthily. In fact, none of the food I ate was what I expected and it was a bit of a guessing game. The supermarkets are basically ration stores - there are queues outside, everything inside is behind counters, making it a bit difficult if you aren't a fluent Spanish speaker and in many of them, you can only use the local currency. Which brings me to the dual economy of Cuba - there is one currency for tourists and one for nationals, which makes things a bit confusing and often overpriced. Cuba was by far the most expensive place I visited on my trip - even pricier than Brazil. But back to the food. I spent most of the time eating pizza at the takeaway store down the road from my casa, or eating eclairs form the bakery (mostly because they were only 25c each). The one time I did go out for dinner, and ordered roast pork, what I got was fatty, chewy pieces of oily meat on a plate with a piece of lettuce. Truly disgusting. I did however have an amazing dinner at my casa one night - lobster, rice and beans, sweet potato and salad. I also had a fantatic bowl of pasta for lunch one day, which cost CUC$1.50, compared to the CUC$4.50 for the greasy pork - see what I mean about it being a guessing game.

Now it sounds like it was all bad. It really wasn't - checking out Plaza la Revolucion and the Revolutionary museum was pretty fascinating (if a bit one sided), walking around Havana Veija was cool - there are some beautiful old buildings, however the minute you got out of the central tourist area, things started to get very run down, very quickly. Staying in a casa was a real experience, checking out an Afro-Cuban all women musical show one night (surprisingly not touristy at all) and I spent one day on some gorgeous beaches just outside of Havana. I also visited the famous Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas and watched cigars being rolled.....the drunk Havana Club rum and smoked on the roof top patio of my casa (when in Rome...).

So my conclusion is that there are highlights for sure. And I have spoken to a few people who stayed in Cuba for longer than I did, and ventured outside of Havana and their consensus seemed to be that it's the kind of place that takes a little while to warm up to, but it gets better. It certainly wasn't like what I thought it would be and I probably got the biggest culture shock of my entire trip here, which I definitely wasn't anticipating - although I'm not exactly sure what my expectations were. It certainly is an example of Communism really not working, and causing major problems in the country. But it definitely opened my eyes a bit and I learnt a few interesting things - like that Cuban people can't sell their houses, they can only swap them with someone with a house of a similar size. Weird.

I am undecided on my final thoughts on Cuba. On the whole, I found it to be a bit frustrating and confusing, but perhaps if I had stayed longer, or got outside of the capital, or wasn't on my own, I would've enjoyed it more. Would I go back? I'm going to leave that as a maybe.....but by the end of my time in Havana, I was definitely glad to be at the airport and on my way to my next, and final, destination - Mexico....

Colombia - the jewel of South America (just keep it quiet, ok?)

The slogan for the Colombian tourist organisation is 'the only risk is wanting to stay' and I found it to be very true indeed. Colombia was a country I wanted to visit, even before my South American adventure began, however I wasn't sure if it was a realistic option. Mainly because, being a woman travelling on my own, I wasn't sure how safe I would be. But as I travelled I seemed to meet more and more people who told me how amazing Colombia was - very beautiful and relatively safe. So I did a bit of research of my own, and talked to everyone I could that had been there and I learned that Colombia is really trying to boost their tourism industry by making their country more tourist friendly - having better services for travellers, making it safer and of course, through advertising. Another traveller told me that it has become a safer place, even just in the last few years due too a few of the bigger drug cartels being busted. So feeling emboldened by my solo travel thus far, I decided to do it. I'd read that travel by night bus was not the safest (as I write this, some friends I met while travelling Colombia just told me they got robbed at gunpoint, on a night bus between Cali and Ecuador) so I decided to fly around Colombia. Avianca offers a cheap air pass whereby if you book a flight in or out of the country with them, you can book domestic flights with them for just US$70 per flight (except for a couple of destinations that cost US$140). I did some reading up on Colombia and decided where I would go in the two weeks I had. I decided to fly into the capital, Bogota, but nothing to see or do really stood out for me, so I headed straight for Salento, via Pereira. Salento is a small town located in the Zona Cafetera (the coffee zone) and as anyone who knows me will contest - I love my coffee, and I am somewhat of a coffee snob. I stayed in a hostel in a wonderful old plantation house (funnily enough, called Plantation House) which was owned by a very chatty British man, and his Colombian wife. They also owned a small coffee farm down the road, and the owner will quite happily take you on a tour (for a small fee of course) where you can see the coffee growing, and when it's the right season, see it being picked, dried and ground. There was free coffee in the hostel (which I totally overdosed on) and you could buy it to take home. The town is a lovely rural town in a picturesque setting of rolling hills. The quaint town square is surrounded with brightly painted buildings, there are restaurants where you can get a three course almuerzo (set lunch) for 6,000 pesos (about US$3), the locals all say 'hola' to you as you walk the country lanes and it's in close proximity to the Valle de Cocora, where giant wax palms grow, surrounded by little else. To get there, you go to the main square, get in a Jeep Willy and when it fills up (often with about eight people), off you go. When it drops you off, it's a five hour hike to the top of the hill but it was worth it. I got to see some hummingbirds up close, drink some weird tea that was served with cheese, and the view on the walk down from the top was amazing - hundreds of these tall wax palms swaying in the breeze. Salento, funnily enough, was where I met quite a few chicks travelling on their own - the only place I'd come across more was in Brazil. It was also the place where I was introduced to the awesomeness that is the game of tejo - a game involving throwing a metal disc at clay embedded with gunpowder, which explodes if you hit it. I don't usually have a talent for sports of any kind - but for this, I did. I think I need to find a local team and join up. Is it an Olympic sport? I may have found my niche.

After Salento, I flew to Santa Marta on the Carribean Coast. I went straight from the airport to the small fishing village of Taganga, minus my bag because it got left behind again - thankfully only for about 5 hours this time. I spent five days in Taganga, mainly relaxing and doing the PADI open water scuba diving course - something I've wanted to do since the first time I went diving in Thailand in 2004 and Colombia is one of the cheapest places in the world to do it, at a bargain US$300. Taganga was a very chilled little town with plenty of backpackers around and almost as many fresh juice stalls on the main road, where they'd whip up a combo of exotic fruits I'd never heard of for a ridiculously cheap price- a great way to start the day! After I'd been certified (as a scuba diver that is) I headed for

Tayrona National Park. To get to the park, you have to drive for about an hour from Taganga (in a van filled to the brim with backpackers, driven by a bung eyed, slightly sleazy Colombian who spoke no english) and then hike into the jungle for another hour and a half. But man, was it worth it. Beautiful beaches lined with coconut palms, crystalline blue water, and the only decisions that need to be made are whether to sleep in a a tent or in a hammock, and what to order for dinner from the one little cafe. I spent four great days here lying on the beach, trying to crack open coconuts in order to fill them with rum, hiking to the top of a massive hill, in jandals, to see some ancient ruins and.....not too much else. How's the serenity.

After my week on the Carribean coast, I flew to Cali. Cali is near the west coast of Colombia and has a reputation as a party city but I wasn't feeling so well when I arrived on a Saturday, so I didn't go out that night and I only stayed one more night, which was a Sunday and the hostel was almost completely empty. So I caught up on a few DVDs I've been wanting to see. Woah there - easy does it.

People ask me all the time what my favourite place in South America is, and I find it a pretty tough question to answer, but in the end I have to say Colombia. Despite the fact that the New Zealand travel advice website lists many of the places I visited in Colombia as being 'high risk' and the country in general as having a high incidence of kidnapping and a risk of terrorism, I never felt anymore threatened than I did anywhere else. The people are friendly, the landscape is beautiful, it's less well-trodden than all the other countries I'd been to so I felt like I was getting a bit more off the beaten track and there's great variety - whether you want to party, lie on a beach, hike, drink coffee, eat.....it's all there. And the more I saw of the country, the more I added to my list for next time - Cartagena, Medellin, Bogota - I will be back again for sure! Havana however, my next destination, was a different story altogether......