Cuba (aka a week without the internet and clocks)

Right, so I got back from the airport today at about 4am and haven't gone to bed. Lovely stuff. I'm just sitting in my room, slowly getting all my shit together for the final days in Toronto. I've got a lot to do in the next few days which, quite frankly, I'm quite annoyed about. Tonight I have a dinner with some relatives in Missisauga and I don't even know whats going on with that... The next night I have a xmas dinner party thing with someone else and the night after that, I'm meant to call home. The following morning is my flight to NYC. I have to do all of that, not to mention saying goodbye to a few more people (which I'm getting better at by the way). I'm also quite annoyed because there are several things stopping me from doing all the stuff I need to get done before the 23rd. I need to plan my east coast trip still, but I'm waiting for someone to call me later on today. I need to do my laundry but everyone is still asleep and I don't have any detergent. I need to send all the stuff I bought from Cuba home, but I don't think the post office is open today and I also need to take care of my contract, which I can't do till tomorrow. Argh.

Anyways, that's enough about that. Cuba. That's where I've been for the last week. I saw a lot of things in that one week. A massive contrast between rich and poor in such close proximity. The aftermath of a revolution. The commercialisation of a country.

Where do I start? A rant about how annoyed I am about people who go to countries and don't even leave their resort? Yeah, lets start there. To be honest, the resort/ hotel that we were staying could be anywhere. Cuba, Fiji, Hawaii, anywhere. But I mean, it's all very well to take a vacation to an exotic place like that but if you don't leave the premises what's the point? I mean, you can say you've BEEN to Cuba, but have you actually SEEN it? What annoyed me the most was in the market in Veradero (tourist capital of Cuba - the highest concentration of hotel/ resorts in the entire country) where a group of teenage girls were looking in the same store as we were and pointed to a picture of Che Guevara and wondered who it was! I mean, it's fine if you don't know exactly what he did but you have to know that name at least, y'know? On a side note, I wonder how Che would feel about having his face plastered on EVERYTHING. I mean EVERYTHING - hats, t-shirts, bags, flags, everything.

I'm not sure how to proceed from here. A day-to-day run down of the entire week? Nah, cos nothing much happened really. Met a few cool people, hung around the resort for a day or so (kind of hypocritical, I know) but we also did a day tour to Habana and we rented scooters and went to see a small town just 15kms away from Veradero called Cardena's. If Veradero is the 'fake' Cuba then Cardenas is what I imagine the 'real' Cuba to be. Apparently a city of about 50 000, Cardenas is run down and poverty stricken. Everything you can imagine, houses falling apart, no doors, people just hanging out in the streets, open sewers. The whole town is more or less in ruins. As if the people were hermit crabs; just trying to make a home where they can. Contrast that to the some 58 resorts in the greater Veradero area and the countless developments happening throughout the peninsula. It makes one wonder where all the money goes, because it definitely doesn't go back to the people.

I really don't know what else to say. I feel that this should be a lot longer considering the magnitude of this trip but I dunno. I guess I'm not really in a blogging mood right now. Consider this a work in progress.