Havana, The Last

Trip Start Aug 23, 1996
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436
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Cuba  ,
Saturday, June 13, 2009

Now the thing with cars in Cuba is that you pay for your first tank of petrol, so the idea is to bring the car back as empty as possible, and as we were down to under a quarter of a tank, had 97 K's to get to Havana, trust me, the pedal was definetly not to the metal !!! And 97 K's later, we were back where we had started, back in old Havana town.

Havana

We had a few things left to see, so we hit the streets in search of them. A fair walk away was the largest Che of them all, and it was on a building in front of the Plaza de la Revolucion. It's a huge square where 1.2 million Cubans watched Pope JP2 give a sermon. Across the road is the largest Josi Marti statue in this land. There was also a tower with a view, but for some reason, it was closed early, so we made our way back to the city.

Back in town, we did something that you can only do in Cuba. As we had been seeing all these old American cars driving around for two weeks, we really wanted to go for a ride in one. So we found a 1957 Ford convertible, and for 30 CUC's, we hit the streets for an hour. It was pretty good cruising thE streets, and when I asked if I could look at the V8 under the bonnet, I pissed myself when he showed me a 2 litre Toyota turbo diesel. 

And just to make sure we saw everything on a tour, we took another convertible, this time it was a topless bus, and we did two laps of the city !!!

We still had two more places to visit, but we wanted to get a shot with Granma again. As she has her photo in the book, she makes a killing !!! But the better photo to take was the man who is on the front cover of the Lonely Planet. We took a load of photos and gave him some money. Realistically, these two make a killing !!!

Eventually, we arrived at the Castillo de la Real Fuerza. It's a little castle which was used to defend the city, but now it is full of small ships !!! Around the corner was the car museum. We went here as there are a few cars that were part of the revolution. Cienfuegos's and Che's cars were here, but best yet was the motorbike. Not just any bike, this was Castro's bike and it was a 1976 Ducati 900SS, and being a Ducati head, all I could think about was, how can I get it into my backpack !!!

And that was it, except the buying of the rum as you do !!!

Costs

But before I leave, here is a quick summary of the costs, trust me, it's not the cheapest place, but it's one of those places that has to be seen before the Castro's up sticks

Petrol - £104.44
Rooms - £263.72
Food and Sightseeing - £704.58
Car Hire - £430.58
Flights - £743.20

Total - £2246.52

 

 
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