Whoa!!! (and photos)

Thanks Tim I thought you might like that one.

As for the others, yes I'm sorry, you're all experts in international politics and history, I'm very impressed by your knowledge of it all and I'm suitably ashamed of my terrible crimes of letting my friends and family know how my last few weeks were. But how cowardly is it to launch personal attacks against someone on the internet? Someone mentioned something about taking grains of salt. Maybe these people taking me way too seriously need a few. Unfortunately I've had to take the comment option off these posts for a while until these people go away. I think we all need a good gym session and some protein.

New Title to Avoid More Crackpots

Hellooooo!! We arrived this afternoon safe-ish and sound-ish from Socialist Cuba. Without even looking at what Lucas might write I know it will be almost exactly the same as the next bit I'm going to write...Cuba was a...

LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP!!

Some of the highs in the past three weeks include:

- 30 degrees and 80-90% humidity the entire time (I enjoyed it).
- Riding old bikes with flat tyres for four hours in the midday sun
- Eating 5c soft serve cones and 20c cheese pizzas from the side of the road
- Singing songs about how we have gone crazy as coconuts
- Smoking 8-inch Cuban cigars (and feeling queasy afterwards being a non-smoker)
- Being offered swigs of cheap rum by cubanos everywhere at any time of day
- Catching an 8-hour truck ride from Santiago de Cuba to Baracoa squeezed in with chickens, mangos and cubanos
- Going and sitting in the ocean with local cubanos during a terrific lightening storm crashing all around us
- Eating some of the best dark chocolate grown and produced in the Baracoa region of Cuba
- Learning 'Guantanamera' (Girl from Guantanamo) and 'Compai Segundo' (Famous Buena Vista Social Club tune) on the guitar and teaching other cubanos how to play them, while they sing the words
- Staying in a cheap illegal 'casa particular' (registered families that people can stay with on holidays) right next to a turqoise sea and white sands
- Being fed lobster, fish and prawns pulled straight from the ocean, mangos and pineapples straight from the ground/tree, goats milk straight from the goat for four days in our illegal house
- Covert eating and sleeping in our house while the police kept a close eye on who came to and from the beach, pretending to not speak spanish was a handy trick
- Having an entire night of electricity which means less mossies and a fan all night
- A tour of a cocoa farm, although after lifelong anticipation, to my disappointment the cocoa in the pods taste nothing like chocolate
- Jumping and swimming in a waterfall at the chocolate farm.
- Others but I'm getting tired now and I'm sure you are too.

Some of the lows include:

- Having 99% of cubanos trying to extract as much money from us as possible, ripping us off wherever they got the chance - luckily we cottoned on to a few of the tricks early on and didn't lose to much.
- Not trusting anyone as a result on the above people - now when we get offered something like a cup of tea - even seemingly for free, the reaction is always - why? whats in it for you? how much will i have to pay? you're sure i won't have to pay anything? what about the water that comes with the teabag, how much does that cost? No I don't drink tea.
- The constant blackouts meaning we would get stuck with no money because all the banks had no power. And hot nighs sleep with mossies with no fans.
- The illegal casa particular with rats and spiders and scorpion looking things and mossies all night.
- The lack of choice for food (rice and pork or cheese pizza) in the towns and villages (mangos and more mangos)
- Plenty more, but again running out of time and energy.

Other stuff, but the political environment was another interesting apsect of Cuba - including the atrocities committed by American foreign policy makers and the hardships overcome by the cuban people, but I'll just give a quick run down of some observations...

SOCIALIST CUBA:

The socialist politics of Cuba could not be called Communism exactly - a bit of an exagerration created somewhere by someone - I think the fact that they apply a lot of communist principles and almost everything is state owned leads people to believe it is some kind of totalitarian dictatorship. As we were told by a American student doing a PhD in Cuban politics, Fidel is not a dictator, he is elected via an upward flow of voting (ie. people vote for a local rep, who then votes on their behalf for a region rep and so forth until a council has been elected who elects a president - with each level having a serious input into domestic and foreign policy (what limited forgein policy they are allowed to conduct) and a 97% voter turnout, Cuba has the highest direct involvement of the people into government policy (according to the PhD student)and generally the cubans were spoke to were happy with the system . This was an explicit statement made in Fidel's 'History Will Absolve Me' speech he gave at his trial in 1953 after being arrested for his first attempt at inciting a revolution - later successful with the help of Rebel Army Commanders Che Guevarra and Camilo Cienfuegos - among others. As I noted Cuba has a limited choice of products - more visible to us being outsiders from a consumer society, the main reason is that Cuba produces almost everything that it consumes, why? Because the USA made explicit in legislation enacted in 1996 that any country found to be trading with Cuba would have trade related measures imposed upon them by the US, previously an implicit deal (again info from the American student). One of the first things we noticed on our arrival was that there were no homeless people on Cuba, ZERO! How many countries with a GDP per capita of around $2000 can boast that statistic, let alone the 'developed' countries, plus every house is provided with sufficient food, not only does it mean no-one starves, but no-one is obese (unlike it's neighbour), Cubans are the most athletically built country of people I have ever seen. But as is human nature, there will always be those who want more than they need to survive, and as a result the majority of Cubans who we had dealings with were those with an entreprenuerial edge to their nature and would go to great lengths with specially concocted stories to part us from our already non-existant resources. We were told by many people in Cuba that all Cubans, no matter their profession, get paid between $12-$24 dollars per month (doesn't sound like much, but when you don't need to buy food or a house and living expenses for a Cuban are very cheap - it isn't that bad). But with employment and income guaranteed after free education the notion of pursuing a career path for pecuniary reasons probably isn't as prevalent and I would imagine this allows people see work as something other than a means to an end.

So if anything, despite some negative experiences resulting from the socialist apsect of Cuba and the attitude towards tourists as being money machines (Cubas only major export is tourism, funding its meagre amount of imports) we came away with a positive view of the place. Obviously others with a more economic rationalist ideaology would be appalled, but after seeing people starving and begging and developed nations, and then not seeing any in Cuba, I would prefer a system of equality.

Anyway - I could go on for ages about what a hero I think Che Guevara was - not just for Cuba but for the oppressed peoples of the world - a non-nationalist fighting for people from any and every country based on the rights of the masses.

The air in Cancun is putrid with wealth and waste - and who said consumers allocate resources more efficiently? That is the most laughable economic concept possible, based on a list of 'ceteris paribus' style assumptions as long as your arm - I suppose a 21 year old rich kid from LA spending $2000 for a week getting drunk and trying to pick up - his money going straight to the corporations and super-funds that own the place - is a better allocation of resources than building houses and buying medicine for sick people. (note: that comment has nothing to do with Cuba, so calm down).

Last couple of days in South America (Colombia photos)

After several days of walking through Bogotá slums in the afternoon twighlight looking like lost tourists (because we usually were) the passport finally got sorted, with not a great deal of assistance from the Australian Government. The final solution came from the British embassy who made a much greater effort to get an entry stamp into my British passport. Not the fault of the Aussie Consulate, but rather the penny pinching antics of the current Government closing down the Venezuela embassy (the link to the Colombian one) and attaching Colombia and Venezuela (now unpaid overworked honorary consuls) to the Brazillian embassy, which has no direct links with either country, by land or language.

Anyway, a woman from the British embassy rang the immigration officials, and said 'stamp the bleeding passport or I'll come down there and cause a right scene' or so I imagined anyway. So after another long walk back to the immigration office and a mess around with more people not knowing anything, I finally got a little stamp in my British passport. So I am now officially travelling as a Brit and will be doing so until who knows when.

The few days of thorough annoyance and desperation resulted in us booking ourselves onto the next flight to Cuba, where we plan to stay for just over three weeks, before heading back into capitalist country via Cancun. It would have been a shame to leave the South American continent on such a sour note as Peru and even more so Colombia have a serious chip on their shoulder when it comes to the United States, and as we look like your average US tourist we certainly get less than the red carpet and are expected to be rolling in cash. I had actually drafted most of this post while still in the grip of anxiety and anger from the passport situation and have since had a couple of fairly relaxing and enjoyable days wandering around the streets of Bogotá with no real purpose other than to soak in the atmosphere and look at some museums.

Although Colombia was a little bit of a downer, it didn't take the sheen off places like Rio, Buenos Aires, Torres del Paine, Pucon and all of Bolivia, countries that I have to go back to again at some stage.

One question though: Am I due for a haircut? Am starting to develop a definite Grug-like appearance. So I'll use a web-poll for an issue rivalling any that Channel 7's Sunrise manages to offer, although probably my voters would have an IQ trebling that of your regular Sunrise viewer.

Vote: Stay with the Grug hair
Vote: Get a haircut and a get a real job you travel victim hippy

As usual, have been doing plenty of thinking during the walks through the streets and my mind wanders across a variety of topics that I want to pen/type on this post. Such as why are you doing what you are doing? Is it part of a long term plan designed to maximise your and your future family's happiness? Do you love what you are doing? If not, why are you doing it? If you are a young person with no dependents then why waste your life doing something that doesn't make you want to leap out of bed every morning tingling with excitement? Such a cliche but money really does mean nothing in the long run, financial security is a fear drilled into us like the fear of going to hell. Although maybe safety is what makes you happy, fear of the unknown seems to be a basic human instinct, so who am I to question what you are doing? It's only because I've spent the last seven years hating myself for my choice of career path, finance and money mean nothing, its an accumulation and distribution of riches, it is a passionless and selfish industry that I only chose to be a part of because I thought it was important to be success. In other words I wasn't doing it for myself but to make others proud of what I had achieved and finance is a field where quantitative success is easy, all you need to sacrifice is your compassion and passion for life. Which brings me back to the first question, why are you doing what you are doing?

I'll save any final thoughts on the South American continent until another time. Have heard mixed reports about the availability of internet on the island of Cuba so this may be the last contact for 3-4 weeks.

I'll just finish by saying that we are shaking with excitement about the upcoming three and a half weeks in Cuba, have been reading about the history of Cuba and Fidel Castro and Cuba in general and we can't wait to see some of the historical monuments and have a Cuban cigar while sitting back with a Havana Club rum listening to the live salsa, plus there are beaches!

Letting off steam....

After not really being too concerned about the loss of my Australian passport as I thought I could continue to travel on my British one, I have since discovered that I have a million hoops to jump through and seemingly require a new passport before they will let me leave the country.

Am considering changing my story and saying that I arrived via Brazil with my Britsh passport but never got it stamped when I entered Colombia due to the cargo plane situation, which is feasible. But I'll have a chat with our Honorary Consulate guy to see if he can sort something out - they are all Honorary because DFAT (or maybe DoFA) are too stingy with the money to operate proper embassies and use Aussie volunteers instead. Which means a new passport would take at least a month from when I can get all the necessary documents together.

THANKS AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT!!!!!!

The result has been the last two days of running around chasing our tales in Bogota as everyone has a different story to each other, and none of them seem to be right! Finding a police station took half a day, as the damn things are actually trailers that move around the city. All of this was done with Lucas carrying his surfboard around after discovering that the post office won't send a surfboard and everywhere else wants nearly $300US to do it.

In other news the military has a huge presence in Bogota and we are regularly patted down by men with machine guns sticking in our backs. Who needs a hug when you can get gentle massages from men with guns??

Anyway, back to the Consulate, and then back to the immigration office if they are still open. Any ideas on how to flee a country?