Oh my God! I feel like I've stepped back 200 years - in every aspect. I've written a whole entry on Havana and a few lines on arriving here yeserday but the internet cafe I'm in has some kind of restrictions and I'm not able to access my usb or any kind of word document. Will try another cafe otherwise Cuba entries will have to wait until I hit Brazil where I assume it's a bit more forward! To make matters worse, email has shut down on me every time I've got in and I feel like I'm sitting in a furnace! This has to be illegal, surely?

Anyway, briefly, Trinidad is a crumbling old town. I'm here for 2 weeks, staying with a family, taking Spanish lessons in the morning (which I started today - by the way, the right bracket doesn't work on this pc, along with a load of other symbols so some of this might not make sense!( and salsa dancing in the late afternoons and currently dying of the heat inbetween! My family is lovely and the house and food so far is great but this town. Man! It's backwards! Horses and carts or bikes as pretty much the only transport and not much else. It's 1pm right now so I'm planning to hunt down a mojito or beer, whichever I can find first and attempt to get fed. Have found a supermarket which looks fairly well stocked so may resort to soggy biscuits for my lunch! I think I'll then need to go back to the confines of my casa and have a nana nap in prepaation for my first salsa lesson at 5pm today.

Who said Trinidad was wonderful? Vivienne....???? No, it is very quaint and there are some lovely buildings, even if they are all falling down. I don't plan to get drunk here as even in the daylight I almost fell down several human sized holes on the street and very nearly got knocked down by a motorbike and sidecar! And that's in the space of the few hours I've been here! Since I haven't quite grasped any Spanish yet, I'm also in a world of my own and never know when someone is talking to me or not.

So, I'll stop prattling and try and find a different internet place in this metropolis )am not too confident) and post a proper blog then.

By the way, thanks for your Xmas calls, texts and emails - much appreciated as I was all on my lonesome!

Right, hasta luego amigos!

From a rapidly melting Linda