A brief stop in San Jose and then we were on our way to Cuba....the land of Castro, Communism and casa familiars.

Everything was slightly different from the moment we took off....the plane was well old and all the safety equipment was in Russian from the 1950s when they were a superpower daddy to Cuba!

Caught a taxi to our chosen hotel but it was too expensive, so the next thing we know phonecalls are being made and we are being collected by a very friendly guy and walked to a casa particular round the corner. In Cuba, because everything is so strictly state-controlled, there are only a very few hotels and most people rent rooms in their homes to foreigners. Luckily our family were super friendly and a perfect intro into the Cuban ways!

Spent the next two days walking around Havana......it's the most fascinating place....like being in 1950s England or World War 2 without the war! Fabulous old buildings, parks and cobbled streets with a really buzzing vibe and people everywhere and most strange of all is all the old cars. Everywhere you look, everyone is driving the coolest classic cars. Buicks, pontiacs, chevys, caddies!!!! Cue lots and lots of car pics!

Plus, you don't notice it to start with, but there's no advertising anywhere and hardly any shops or restaurants. Instead there are only state controlled restaurants or a few privately run Paladares which are technically only legally allowed to serve 12 or less punters at any one time and cannot serve lobster or beef! So everywhere there are dodgy guys on street corners hissing at you offering illegal restaurants and special lobster dinner for cheap price! Hmmm.

The few shops that exist are really strange too, they have nothing really to sell and empty shop fronts but still the people queue to get inside toting their ration cards desperate to get their hands on whatever shipment of goodies has arrived!We did manage to find a lot of well-stocked local bars tho', so whilst we weren't eating, we were certainly making up for it in mojitos! And we followed in Ernest Hemingway's footsteps with a cocktail in his honour in all his famous drinking dens!!

Being good tourists we did the recommended walk through the Old Town visiting the old perfumerie, the hotel where Hemingway wrote..... and the second largest pharmacia in the whole world which was pretty cool with a massive mahogany serving bench, Tiffany stained glass roof and rows and rows of ceramic pots full of potions. It's still in use today as a general pharmacy for the Cubans too although all they seemed to be stocking when we visited was shelves and shelves of adult incontinence pants and baby bottles!

One evening we took a lovely romantic sunset stroll along the Malecon seafront where there are some of the most amazing old buildings from before the revolution, it's such a shame that most of them are literally falling down....in fact quick stat.....every three days apparently there is a significant building collapse in Havana which explains why all the locals wisely walk in the middle of the street rather than under the crumbling balconies! There is a restoration programme here but like everything in Cuba, it's pretty darn slow!

On our last day we visited the Capitola building, Fidel's answer to the White House, where we posed for pics on the steps for a fab, grainy photo taken with a camera box contraption from the 1900's! Sampled some homebrew beer in Plaza Vieja and snacked on a well cheap and well tasty pork peso roll....paid for with the local currency moneda nacional instead of the convertibles pesos. It's all a little confusing, there is a dual currency, convertible pesos are worth 25 moneda nacional pesos, so if you can find nacional peso places, it's sooooo cheap!

Last stop for muchos mojitos in fav Monserrate Bar watching the local salsa band do their stuff while a freaky Morgan Freeman lookie-likie danced outside on the curb...before heading east to Che Memorials and the biggest firework fight in the world!