Return to Havana

Cienfuegos to Havana, Cuba, 8 September 2016

I am back from Sabah. Mostly there was no internet and no time so there will be no temporary posts. I will start with posts on Sabah soon but first here is the final post on the tour in Cuba. Jools and I stayed on for some extra days in Havana and we will return to that after the Sabah posts.

Early in the morning in Cienfuegos, here are two people fishing with a freighter behind them.

A little later, trimming the verges with machetes.

This is the hotel where we were staying.

“It is the ideas that make us a fighting people.”

I think this is a Zetor tractor from Czechoslovakia.

Quite a few horses and carts on the roads..

Roadside house.

IOM3 tractor from Belarus and military truck.

Same military truck and horse & cart.

Horse and cart, truck and turkey vulture.

Probably a Chev.

More horses and carts …

We meet again …

On the road again.

(though neither Canned Heat nor Floyd Jones in evidence).

This image and the previous six were all taken within about ten minutes, mainly from the bus.

Roadside shop for onions and garlic.

Band at our hotel in Havana (Hotel Santa Isabel).

On the streets in Havana.

View including Castillo de la Fuerza Real.

Looking down from the hotel room.

People are sitting round on the street to use the hotel’s wifi.

Castillo de la Fuerza Real.

Taxi.

Street corner with sunset approaching.

On the street, after dark.

The wifi zone again, this time at night in the rain.

Sabah Itinerary

Apr28

1 May to 15 May 2019.
.

My partner Jools and I are about to embark on a trip to Sabah. It is a two-week wildlife tour, organised by NatureArt Lab, based in Canberra. In due course I will post for each part of the journey and there will be links to those posts below. I may produce some temporary posts as I go but only if I have sufficient time. Final posts will appear later (and I still have to finish final posts for Cuba and the Caribbean).

Links for summary posts and then final posts will appear under the maps in due course.

There is a great profusion of wildlife in Sabah which is much less affected by logging than Sarawak and Kalimantan. There should be much to see including orangutans, sun bears, pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys, hornbills, spectacular butterflies and remarkable vegetation such as orchids and the giant rafflesia flowers.

Using the letters from the map above (click it if you need to see more detail):

(a) We arrive in Kota Kinabalu Airport
(b) We spend a couple of days in and around Kota Kinabalu, the capital and largest city of Sabah
(c) Cool rainforest in Mount Kinabalu (everywhere else we go will be hot and humid)
(d) Different birds, insects and animals at Poring Hot Springs and staying the night in a Tea Plantation.
(e) Sepilok Rainforest Discovery Centre, Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre and the Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre
(f) Photography from a boat on the Kinabatangan River
(g) Tabin Wildlife Reserve
(h) Fly out from Lahad Datu Airport.

Links to Posts (most yet to come):

KL to KK (Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu)
KK Markets (Kota Kinabalu)
KK Fishing Boats (Kota Kinabalu)
Egrets – I’ve had a few…
Mount Kinabalu
Poring Hot Springs and Sabah Tea Plantation
Sepilok Day 1 – Giant Flying Squirrels
Sepilok Day 2 – Sun Bears and Orang Utans
Kinabatangan River
Tabin Wildlife Reserve

Cienfuegos

Apr27

Cienfuegos, Cuba, 7 September 2016

We headed off from Trinidad de Cuba to Cienfuegos.

The passenger in the cart with his bicycle is lucky the truck isn’t heading into the wind.

Roadside billboard quoting Ché: “May the hardness of these times not make us lose the tenderness of our hearts. Ever onward to victory”.

We are now in the outskirts of Cienfuegos.

Some of the cars are smaller than others.

Views from our hotel room…

We are now in Palacio Ferrer, at the edge of Parque José Marti.

It was built between 1917 and 1918, initially as a family residence.

Looking down past Parque José Marti from the top of Palacio Ferrer.

The area around Cienfuegos was a Taino (Indian) settlement in the early period of Spanish occupation. They were decimated mainly by disease but communities survive in the mountains. Cienfuegos was founded by French immigrants in 1819 and thus has a French influence unusual for Cuba. The centre of Cienfuegos is a World Heritage Area, representing “the best extant example of early 19th century Spanish Enlightenment implementation in urban planning”.

Catedral de la Purisma Conception.

Palacio de Gobierno.

We walked down to the harbour.

On the harbour-front promenade.

There was a group of people doing curious exercises on a road beside the harbour.

Sunlight through the clouds as evening approaches.

There are more posts on Cuba and on the Caribbean to come, but this will be the last for a little while as I am off on a short trip in a few days. More on that tomorrow.

Trinidad de Cuba

Apr24

Trinidad de Cuba, Cuba, 6 September 2016

Due to the fiascos of our tour organisation, instead of spending time in forests and waterfalls, we spent the day in the town of Trinidad de Cuba, This turned out to be a good thing.

This is a 1957 Plymouth. It says so on the windscreen.

This is a town of many tractors.

Cathedral clock tower in the background.

Band in the Plaza Major.

People on the streets.

It is Cuba’s best preserved old colonial town and the centre area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Musicians for sale rather than for hire.

Local gallery and hostal or B&B.

Market near the Plaza Major.

It’s an Anole, perhaps Allison’s Anole ( / Blue-Headed Anole).

1952 Ford. loading up to leave a B&B,.

The beauty and the beast, maybe.

1954 Chevrolet.

Not everyone drives cars …

… or rides horses….

Trinidad de Cuba was founded in 1514 and Cortes recruited here and left from here on his conquest of the Aztec Empire.

We also stopped by at a beach a few kilometres from Trinidad de Cuba – Playa Ancon.

Havana to Topes de Collantes

Apr20

Havana to Topes de Collantes, Cuba, 5 September 2016

This is on the street near our hotel. Note the interesting variety of objects hung out to dry on the balcony.

Before leaving Havana, we visited the Gran Teatro de Habana, or the Opera House.

On the street, outside.

1954 Chevrolet.

I still had time to photograph a few more old cars before we left.

1952 Ford.

So we headed off to Topes de Collantes. On the way we were passed by a 1959 Chevrolet Impala.

This is our driver.

Sign along the way.

We were closer to Australia than we had thought.

It can be difficult taking photographs from a moving vehicle. There can be a high failure rate from failure to point the camera to the correct place and achieve focus as we whiz along.

Topes de Collantes is a National Park south of Havana. This is a view from a lookout.

This was the point that the wheels started to fall off the tour. Cuba was fantastic and our local guides were wonderful but the organisation was at times woeful. The organiser had failed to research the most basic fact that US credit cards aren’t accepted in Cuba as a reaction to the embargo. Consequently by this point he had run out of money. Our schedule said that the next day we were to go to walk in rainforest and see some waterfalls but it didn’t happen because he could not afford to hire a bus. Jools and I made our own travel arrangements to get to Cuba but the others didn’t and he borrowed thousands of dollars from them for their flights, promising to pay them back after the tour. Some of them sued him and got their money back; others didn’t sue and didn’t get any money back. At the end of the tour he was facing being barred from leaving Cuba until he eventually found a way to pay the guides.

Still, as I say, all that wasn’t the fault of Cuba and Cuba was wonderful.