Day 1: Havana

In Havana!
Fine morning ride through the city passing colonial and revolutionary architecture. Paused in Independence Square with a huge billboard of Che. Then by bus to Matanzas, a town on the on coast. Stayed in a beautifully restored hotel on the main square. I walked out and could not find any shops, where do Cubans buy their houshold stuff? The tourist economy is very strange with foreigners having "convertible" pesos to use in hotels and bars. The absence of advertising is also strking. Nice group with a majority of teachers...

Day 6: Trinidad to Camaguey

We started off with a fine cool ride and then climbed up a high tower built in the 19 c  to  check on slaves. Now it is a major tourist attraction and surrounded by stalls of fine white tableclothes painstakingly made at home by Cuban women. We also had  a ride in an old train this looked 19 century but had come from the USSR in 1970. The ride up to lunch was through rolling countryside, a few cowboys were riding round and  we passed  a  state cattle farm.  It was so hot that we stopped at lunchtime. We then had a brief visit to Sancti Spiritus where there were shops for Cubans to buy shoes and clothes.

Then on to Camaguey where we stayed in cell like rooms in colonial elegance. Since this an Aug holiday 85 percent of the group are teachers or students and a quarter are Irish and bring a mellow humour... Age range 16 to 68. Everyone seems easy going and we have gelled well. Our leader is a  black Cuban, his grandfather was brought over as a slave from Nigeria which brings slavery to touching distance.

Day 5 (Tues 14th): Trinidad - rest day

Spent the rest day appreciating the elegance of Trinidad and chilling out by the pool. Trinidad is a beautifully preserved old Spanish colonial town with houses painted in hues of blue and pink. One of the most interesting places was the Museo Historico in the former home of a sugar magnate. The elegant rooms with tompe d'oiel were preserved and I could imagine relaxing at the piano.  Trinidad revolutionary history was captured in documents and artefacts on the move away from slavery.  The  bell tower was crowded with  people  being photographed against the beautiful view for their Facebook page. Seeing a monastery that had been turned into a revolutionary museum warmed me.

Trinidad is heaving with shops selling tourist tat, acres of Che fridge magnets and Fidel in a cigar shape and I wondered about the economics of producing these goods for tourist pesos rather than consumables for Cubans. I wonder what the Cubans themselves think about the tourists who have so much in comparison to themselves.

I have also noticed an absence of engagement with the outside world. I have not seen any newspapers or magazines and certainly no internet cafes and very low mobile phone use. 

Day 4 (Mon 13th): Cienfegos to Trinidad, Castro's birthday

We biked 88 km at 35 deg and by the end I had almost lost the will to live. In the morning we rode across a rolling upland with beautiful views. Later we crossed several rivers draining in the Caribbean where people  were out on the beaches. We also went into a village store which had no signs outside, inside it had pitiful stocks of rice, beans, spaghetti and expensive plastic buckets. The male household head holds the ration book and the rations are insufficient for a month so then people pay market prices. Poor quality and no choice. Very tough running a household here. 

I have been wanting to dance since I arrived so a group of us went down and danced salsa and heard rumba in open-air bars to celebrate my roommate's (Tamsin) birthday. Surprisingly there were no big celebrations for Castro.

Day 3 (Sun 12th): to Cienfuegos

Another hot day and fortunately we completed the biking in the morning along a beautiful coast road with deep blue sea on one side and forest on the inland side. Went down to the sea to dip our toes in but the coral was too sharp. Visited the Bay of Pigs Invasion Museum which was full of pictures of very young revolutionaries fighting off the USA-backed invasion. Ended the day in Cienfuegos which was founded by French settlers (1820) and so had a neoclassical square and town hall. Ended the day at a local carnival with packed crowds dancing on the seafront and drinking home brew dispensed from barrels. I watched the closing ceremony in London, Cuban-style, drinking moijtos.

Day 2 (Sat 11th Aug): to Bay of Pigs Swamp

Did all the biking in the morning through rolling conutryside with small farmhouses. Farmers using ox carts and smoking vast cigars. Small towns with crumbling colonial buildings. People live in small concrete bungalows with neat gardens. Obviously very houseproud. Endde the day in a Butlins-like beach resort in the swamp.

Not German but Italian, experiencing the South Tyrol.

I enjoyed the differences between Italian Verona and German south Tyrol.

I found the jubliee overdone so i was delighted to escape to Verona for a dermatology conference. Verona is a lovely city and walking around one sees the marks of past civilisations. The Roman arena is used for concerts and this design template is visible 20 centuries later in the Olympic stadium with stands for merchandise as well as sport tracks. There are wonderful 14 century frescoes in the St Fermo, the ceiling has 400 saints heads painted on it which reminded me of the saints heads one sees in Ethiopian churches, notably Gondar. The Venetian occupation can also be discerned in the pillars with the Venetian lion and the shapes of the windows. The imaginative new photography gallery (Sacvi Scaligeri) combines old and new with subterranean galleries built around the roman foundations and one walks over roman roads, drains, and swimming pools. The ancient cobbles were hard to negotiate with the buggy carrying Joan, Steve and Eglantine’s 8 week old baby.. The exhibition was of Robert Capa’s war photos and we experienced war in Spain, London, France, Germany and then Vietnam. He captures emotions brilliantly, the steadiness of men under fire, the dejection of refugees, the fear created by a rogue sniper in liberated Paris, firing on the celebrating crowd. The exhibition ends with a series of portraits of Capa’s friends, William Faulkner crossing a river in Wyoming, Picasso on the beach holding up an umbrella for his second wife, all capturing the person’s character.

 Verona at night was very Italian with people sitting outside the arena drinking and much promenading going on. I think one gets the best Italian ice creams in Verona, we had excellent ones from a long established shop and then even found a shop open after midnight for that late night ice cream.

I then headed to the south Tyrol with a train ticket costing 8 euros for a journey of 312km, and not even bought in advance, unlike British tickets. The train goes along the Adige valley up to Bolzano.

I first came to the German speaking south Tyrol in 1994 when my friend Jorg came as a summer locum family doctor in Kurtasch/cortaccio village. The area was in the Austrian empire and ceded to Italy in 1919.  The houses are Alpine with sloping wood roofs, and the towns have a Germanic look with large houses. The area feels prosperous, the orchards on the flat valley floor are neat and tidy, even the vines on the valley sides are neat and the area oozes quiet efficiency and prosperity. It feels more German lite than Italian. Jorg is German, married to an Italian doctor Tina, their kids Martha and Frederico are fluent in Italian, german and English as well as being passionate about modern dance and football respectively.

We went up towards the Brenner Pass and walked around a small lake surrounded by pine trees, the meadows were full of daisies and buttercups. The village church (Durnholz) was tiny with medieval frescoes showing the day of judgement. Outside were the memorials for the soldiers killed in the two world wars, they all had Germanic names and they had died all over the Austro-Hungarian empire (Germany, Italy, Ukraine). That afternoon there was a terrific storm and which was followed by beautiful scenes with light coming through clouds and water glistening on steep rock faces.

On Sunday morning i woke to the sound of a village brass band and a Tryolean village procession was celebrating Corpus Domini. The women were all in dirndl skirts and the boys wearing lederhosen and the men had hats with feathers. They all then tucked into wurst and beer sitting in the village.

These borderlands are interesting places where cultures and boundaries clash. Geography really defines the inhabitants of a place. Here the Alpine climate defines the housing, the food and the transport but it is the historical associations that define the language and the ethos, so the South Tryol for me feels more German than Italian. At least one can transcend these geographical and national differences by being a European and i came home laden with Italian cheese.