Very long 7 hour taxi ride, including 4 hours in a nice little peugeot and 3 bone-shaking hours in a battered Lada, and we pulled into the little town of Vinales - tobacco country! Failed to locate our pre-arranged casa but managed to find ourselves a fab place with a sunny balcony, hot showers and comfy beds....we were starting to think that comfy beds were all US owned! Had tasty casa dinner with two fellow guests - a highly irritating Aussie couple - befor...

Spent a few days roaming the town....a super cute, rambling town with colourful houses, cobbly streets and beautiful old spanish churches, then headed to the nearby Playa Ancon beach which was great and so different from the dodgy beach in Cienfuegos. Tanned to the max, we were ready to hit the hut for New Year's celebrations! Had a traditional feast of pork, with real crackling!, yucca with garlic and beans..of course!Then headed off to complete a bar crawl of...

Arrived at a lovely casa, super friendly folks with a mad dog! Dumped our bags then explored the town and walked down to the point which juts right out into the bay. Had a moneda peso lunch which perhaps not surprisingly was the smallest meal we have ever been served much to the acute disappointment of the starving boys! Cheeky sundowner at Club Cienfuegos before hailing a horse taxi cart back into town! That night we went for dinner, but much like all Cuban re...

Caught a cheeky taxi to the tiny town of Remedios to watch the world famous Las Parrandas fireworks display on Christmas Eve. Ended up staying in an illegal casa for the first night because the whole town was totally rammed, which was fine despite the loud squealing of pigs being slaughtered in the backyard! Hooked up with some fellow illegals Aussies Flick and Jack to check out the floats for the evenings fireworkfestival and sample some of the local 3 peso be...

Arrived at Santa Clara after the longest four hours ever including lots of random stops and a Mel Gibson movie in Spanish with Portugeuse subtitles....couldn't figure out why we were attracting so much attention on the bus until we read that the Astro buses are strictly for Cubans and somehow we had ended up the only tourists on board! Bit of a c*** up when we arrived at the casa which had been pre-booked by our lovely family in Havana, to discover the wily old...