Partagas

Another shot from the lot with old trains and buses next to Partagas the famous cigar factory in Havana. I've burned a lot of film here :-)

GoogleMinus

So trying to be a bit more of the social media expert that I'm supposed to be, I started using GooglePlus.
None of my friends are using it actively yet so there's not much happening on my GooglePlus yet. I guess being an earlyish adapter is boring as hell.

I however thought to give this GooglePlus thing a chance and started to actively complete my profile with some info and pictures and stuff. As soon as I got to the photo part of my personal GooglePlus space, I found al the pictures I had ever posted on this blog (Blogger is a Google application) were imported in GooglePlus. All neatly stowed away in an album named 'Hou Koers'.
For some reason however there were a lot of duplicate pics, so I cleaned up the album a bit. Now as soon as my friends would start using GooglePlus actively, they would have the convenience of viewing all of the pics ever posted on my blog without having to look at all those duplicates. Pretty cool of Google to automaticly import these pics I thought.

Boy was I wrong.

For some reason the album featured in my GooglePus environment weren't imported pics, but it was the actual database of my blog! So all the duplicate pics I removed from the album disappeared from this blog!

This sucks big time. I will try to put the missing pics back, but it's a pain to locate the pics and reload them on the blog, so it will take some time.

For now here's a pic I shot somewhere last year. I bet this guy in Cuba isn't bothered about and/or with new social media applications, he's way to busy looking groovy.

More Cuban decay

Every time I tried to take a picture the man would get out of the shot. I explained that I would like a picture of him with the trains, but he told me he was not the thing of importance, the trains were. Eventually he posed for the shot, but with his head bowed. Out of respect for the trains?  

For some reason I'm incredibly intrigued by decay. You know those arial photo's of plain graveyards in the desert? Or those stacks of cars waiting at car graveyards.. Or pictures of Tjernobyl, a whole city that's slowly falling apart.. You might argue that there's not much to like about those places but I always feel very atracted to them. Maybe it's related to the inclination to melancholy that's rooted in me, but on another level it's caused by the visual aspect of decay. I just really like the nice matte colors, the rust and the cracks in paint and walls, and all their different textures.
It's safe to say that for somebody who likes this kind off stuff, Cuba was a treat. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of the more mainstream beauty there as well, it's not that the whole country is in a poignant state. But luckily for guys like me there is quite a bit of deacy to be found.

Right next to the famous Partagas cigar factory I spotted this train graveyard. The old man in the above picture took me on a guided mini-trip around the grounds. He told me he was the son of a brakeman and lived his whole life among these trains. He was born and raised in the town of Santa Clara, but when the trains moved to Havana, he went with his trains.
Although I barely speak Spanish, I could notice that the man was quite emotional when talking about the trains. I tried to get to kow what would happen with the trains, but all I could understand was that the old man was going to stay there as long as the trains were there.

Muscle

Night time transportation

Even more Cuba cars

And a horse...

Che don't surf

Now, I know it's not much, but there are some waves out there on that photo. I took the shot on or second day in Cuba in Varadero. I was told that although Cuba isn't the best destination for waves, you could score some waves there when the conditions are right and I should go to Varadero cause that is the only place where you can rent a board.

Lucky us! We we happened to land in Cuba when tropical storm Tomas just crossed the island. I was thinking tropical storm, thats bound to move some water, not?!
Well it did move some water... However not that much was moving in the direction of Varadero. Kneehigh choppy waves wasn't exactly what I was expecting thinking about tropical storms, but nevertheless I was happy. I only had to find me a surfboard and I would be getting some surfing done in nice water temperatures sans all the rubber!

Then as I walked along the beach I began to wonder why all the beach-chairs where empty, and why there wasn't anybody in the water? Sure it was a somewhat cloudy day, but somebody would want to go for a swim anyway right?!

Turns out that it was prohibited to enter the water! There were waves and because of that there was some currents and that off-course is way too dangerous for people to go in the water!!! And renting any water sport equipment was out of the question for sure. Just look at the picture! We are talking about some kneehigh choppy waves here!. What a deception!

This just really left me wondering why the resorts in Varadero rent out surfboards at all. Considering the water is prohibited when there's swell. Is it for floating around sipping a Cuba Libre?

Lesson learned. Always bring your own board or just stick to cigars and rum when visiting Cuba.

Cuba Cars

I like old cars. Cuba was a treat.

 

Cuba

Is great!
First of all, Cubans are unbelievable friendly people. It is somewhat sad that this should be the biggest culture shock when visiting a country, but it was. I realized how absurd it was, when I spoke to several other 'western' tourists who realized they had to get used to people trying to be genuinely friendly to them.
For some reason we seem to expect that when strangers are being friendly, they are trying to get money from you or are trying to distract you so that their partners can rob you.
Off-course there where a lot of people trying to make some money in Cuba as well, but it was in a decent way.
For example: we were checking out an old building in Havana. A couple stopped to tell us about the history of the building and why it was in such a bad state now. After the explanation they asked us to buy some milk for their baby. They wouldn't accept any money, they really wanted us to come to the shop and buy them milk. Sure, this is also a form of hassling (especially with the prices of baby milk nowadays, but it's the most sympathetic form of hassling I personally ever experienced.

Now if anybody feels the need to inform me that Cubans are known to mix crystal meth with baby milk for consumption, please do so I can restore my pessimistic world view.