Me gusto Cuba! Cuba is an amazing country, it's so different from other modern countries. Being here is a fantastic experience and I'm so glad that we will spend our last month in the Caribbean at Cuba. Sure it's a bit more complicated but it's so worth it!

The day after checking in we decided to go on a road trip with our friends Martin and Miriam from the boat Ranja. They picked us up at our marina with their rental car and we drove of to Holguin. Martin and Miriam had already been in Cuba for about a week so during the drive they shared their experiences so far which was great hearing. At Holguin we stopped and grabbed a pizza at a street stand. Guess what it coasted us?! 5 CUP each which is approximately 0,3 Euro. Pretty cheap! First we had planned to stay over night in Holguin but since it was still early in the day we continued our trip to another town called Bajamo.

At Bajamo we had our first encounter with a "casa particular". A casa particular is the place to go if you want to rent a room inside the house of a Cuban family, which I definitely recommend instead of staying at a dull hotel. It's really fun to get to see the inside of the Cuban homes and trying to communicate with them in Spanish. We had read that some of the rooms in the casa particulares could have a double and single bed so we were on the lookout for that, so that I, Sofia and Maria could share one room instead of two and cut down on the cost a bit. But that was easier said than done. The hostess of the casa particular that we first stopped at claimed that it wasn't allowed, that we would never find a room like that in Bajamo and that we had to rent two rooms. In rapid Spanish of course. Thank God that Miriam is good at Spanish and helped us with the translation. But we weren't fully satisfied with this explanation though and decided to try another place. Further up at the same street we had spotted another casa particular and we went over there to check if we could have better luck. A really nice lady welcomed us and showed us a room. The room was nice but there was only one double bed… to bad. When we explained to her that we wanted a room for all three of us she also started saying that it wasn't possible. Hmm, okay maybe we had to rent two rooms here in Bajamo because it was a smaller town but we would definitely not agree on that in the bigger towns we thought. So me and Maria decided to take that room and Sofia found another one.

After drinks with the others at our balcony we went out to get some food for the evening. We found a big street where they had put out dining tables all over it. It looked nice and what really looked nice was the prices on the menu. The prices were in the local currency CUP which makes it really cheap for us tourists. We all ordered beer and food like chicken, rice and salad, and in the end we had to pay 2 Euros per person. That's a good price for dinner and drinks!

After the dinner we strolled down the streets of Bajamo. Sofia heard some distant music and keen on dancing salsa she suggested that we should check out where it came from. So we did. The music was coming from what looked like a normal house and just as we were about to leave since it wasn't a club, someone opened the door and waved for us to come in. Huh!? Should we really go in there, to a private party? Yeah sure why not. As we went through the door they lighted up the room and it felt like they were doing it just so that everyone could get a good look at us. People were really staring! But in a nice way I think and soon they dimmed down the light again and continued their dancing. It was a party for a girl called Lucy who was turning 15 which is an important birthday for Cubans. So we felt a bit older then most of the average guests. But they where really nice to us, typically of Cubans, and offered us beer and food. So we stayed there for a while and did some stiff dancing compared to the locals.

The next day we had breakfast at our casa particular which was really nice. It's common that you eat breakfast at the place where you are staying for a fee of about 3 to 4 CUC. CUC is the other currency here in Cuba and 1 CUC is a little less than a Euro (I think, correct me if I'm wrong). Well anyhow, the breakfast was splendid and the lady that had hosted me and Maria was so sweet. That's the beauty with staying at casa particulares I think, that you get to meet all this nice friendly Cuban people. I love it and just wish that I could speak some more Spanish so that I could talk more to them. Most of them don't know English so if you are going to travel around Cuba I recommend that you know some Spanish.

After Bajamo we continued our journey which will be described in upcoming blog posts. Right now I'm inhaling the smell of a lovely soup that Maria is cooking so I think I will call it a day.

/Catrine