Trip to Cuba in April 2006. We spent 5 days in Cuba; 2 in Havana, 2 in Trinidad and a day trip to Viņales.

Having lived most of my life just over 100 miles south of Cuba in the Cayman Islands, it has only recently opened up with direct flights 3 times a week from Cayman. Traveling to Cuba via Cayman is a great way to get there from the US and there is no evidence in your passport that you have even been to Cuba (for those Americans who are concerned about the travel restrictions imposed by the current US administration.)

In a way it is a good thing that free trade with the US is not currently possible, because it means the fantastic culture of Cuba is not yet spoilt by the American culture of "a Burger King and McDonalds on each street corner". Having said that, the contrast between the local people and the foreign tourists is very large. Many hotels and shops are off limits to local people - not that they could afford them anyway.

Many parts of Havana are literally crumbling to pieces, which is a shame to see such fantastic architecture go to ruin, but in a way it gives a certain charm to the place. Many areas are being renovated and restored. It is also amazing to see the conditions in which some people are living - there were many buildings that we thought nobody could still possibly still be living in, but were in fact full of life.

In the mornings and evenings the streets come to life with people outside chatting, children playing in the streets and everyone going about their daily lives. Each doorway and balcony was its own little window onto Cuban culture. Quite a contrast to the US were most people go home, shut the door and spend the evening alone watching TV.

In short the people of Cuba were the nicest and friendliest we have ever met. Despite the conditions that most Cubans are living under, everyone appeared to be happy, and nobody had anything bad to say about Fidel Castro other than the occasional grumble about shortages. Everyone has a very good education and literacy rates are high. In some of the touristy areas we were sometimes approached and asked for money, but on saying "no", that was the end of it. There was no pestering to buy souvenirs, other than a few people approaching to sell cigars. It was very refreshing to see that race is simply a non-issue in Cuba, and an intermixed population is considered perfectly normal.

Central Havana is a treasure chest of architecture, classic cars, and culture and is a Mecca for any photographer. There is literally a photo opportunity at every turn and I could have spent days just photographing the people who were always friendly and more than happy to be photographed.

Security is not a problem at all. We felt extremely secure at all times, even in the most run-down of neighborhoods late at night, and with a bag full of expensive camera equipment. I felt much more secure in Cuba than I do in most parts of the US. There were literally police or security guards on each block, and even under each bridge along the highways (to assist with making sure locals are given rides if space permits).

In general Cuba was amazingly clean with very little litter. The one glaring exception is the air pollution from all of the cars, trucks, motorbikes, buses etc. The roads can be literally clogged with black smoke as emission controls are simply not a priority compared to trying to keep 50+ year old vehicles running.

These galleries are some of the 1200+ photographs that I took over the 5 days, and I would have taken many more if daylight and flash memory capacity permitted! Most images were captured in camera RAW format, then imported into Adobe Lightroom, with final conversion to JPEG in Photoshop CS2. Unfortunately a few of the shots in Trinidad are a bit grainy because I accidentally left the ISO set to 1600 after taking night shots (no motion blur in any of those shots :-)

Please feel free to post comments and vote for your favorites if you enjoyed looking at this gallery.