Steven’s Cuba Blog

Disaster in Havana - Ernesto’s blog

Ernesto’s blog (live from Havana!) has some facts and photos about the damage in Havana by Hurricane Wilma.

Marti Emerging (not my photo)

A bust of Jose Marti bust emerges from the water flooding a Havana street. I was standing at the payphone in the background just less than 2 weeks ago.

Question about Google and Cuba

The answer to this is probably painfully obvious, but I would like to ask (I’m opening up [moderated] comments on this post) if anyone knows whether Google’s Cuba search portal has caused any trouble for them, legally. Boris says that it’s no big deal since Google doesn’t “have a presence in Cuba, nor do business with Cubans in Cuba”.

However, Google is still an American company, owning a .cu Cuban domain name. The Cuban state obviously has no problem with this, but wouldn’t this cause problems for them with the U.S. State Department? I thought that it was prohibido for Americans to even own .cu domain names?

Epilogue

I’m back in Montreal - I’ve been back for a week actually (and I still haven’t seen the sun yet).

After 1900km of biking - and countless more on the bus, the train, driving, in the taxi / cocotaxi / bicitaxi, and on horseback - I went as far west as Pinar Del Rio and as far east as Santiago de Cuba (one of my new favorite cities). I stopped in almost every city and town in between - big and small - and had wonderful conversations, made new friends, and discovered things about Cuba - and about myself.

I’m going to be writing two reports on this specific trip - one basic “this-is-where-I-went-and-what-I-did” affair, and a second one which will be more a socio-politic-techno-psychological (say that three times fast!) observation based on what I saw and the discussions I had with Cubans.

Also, keep an eye on the parent URL of this blog (http://ahoracuba.com) in the next few weeks… although my hopes of getting Cubans blogging were kind of soured by the discovery that most of them can’t even legally access the web, I’ve got some ideas up my sleeve.

Also, one of the major news sources out of Cuba - http://cubasi.com - now has an RSS feed. And no: while I wish I had something to do with it, I didn’t…

Abuelo

Twins!

Toivo and Luke

Back in Havana

Well, it´s been almost 6 weeks of biking, driving, hitchhiking, horseback riding and taking the train through the entire island of Cuba.

I´ll save the lengthy commentary (and political diatribe) for when I get back, but suffice it to say that this trip shattered many of my long-held beliefs relating to the country.

What can can say is that I had the time of my life, and that this trip is probably one of the most important things I´ve ever done. I´m also going to return within a year.

I¬¥m back in Havana right now, but I¬¥m going to go to the Isla de la Juventud (”Island of Youth” / better known as the famous “Treasure Island”) tomorrow for a few days.