As if you didn’t have enough reasons to vote Democratic this year, here’s one more: Obama is likely to extend an olive branch to the Castro Brothers and ease cultural exchange and travel restrictions in this tit-for-tat, penis-waving contest that is US-Cuba relations.
How does this affect you?
The fact that Americans at large being deprived of the closest, largest, most entertaining and ecologically and culturally diversified Caribbean travel destination should be up there with the seven wonders of the world, and a testament to just how much damage a few angry Cuban old men can do when they put their minds to it.
(Old, Cuban white men, because until Castro came along, Cubans were divided along class lines that were clearly steeped in race relations as well - wealthy descendants of slave-owning Spaniards, and black descendants of those slaves. Guess who fled stateside when Cuba went socialist?).
As you might have noticed after reading Fashionably Late, Cuba is a major travel destination (budgettravel destination, might I add) for Canadians and Europeans, and just about any sun-worshippers who like to inject their holidays with a lots of local flavour and culture, because that’s something Cuba has heaps of. As a matter of fact, last weekend I was reading an article in a travel magazine featuring Cartagena, Columbia, and rather than highlight bars with Colombian flavour, the author repeatedly referenced Cuban music floating to the street through the open windows of Colombian homes and restaurants, and described a fun evening she spent at “Havana Cafe” in Cartagena.
Even in the Cayman Islands, we draw much of our ‘cultural’ tourist attractions from chunks of Cuban national heritage: mojito and cigar bars, Cuban cuisine, and Cuban art.
Until the last generation of grumpy old Cuban men meets its maker, and a party with something other than pandering to lunatic demographic fringe groups comes into power in the States, I will be happy to relay to you, faithful blog readers, pictures and blogging entries I will be writing and uploading in two weeks’ time, as I go on a week-long press trip across a portion of Cuba’s northern coast! I will be starting out in Havana, driving through Santa Clara, Sanctus Spiritu, the achingly pretty and wonderfully conserved colonial town of Trinidad, and finally the white sandy string of keys to the north: Cayo Coco, Cayo Guillermo, and Cayo Santa Maria. This was a very unexpected, but very welcome opportunity.
So stay tuned for some travel blogging to come your way in November, and hopefully calm you down after these past few months of election frenzy.
Hasta Noviembre!
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