Any Excuse to Travel

Stories from travels in

Cuba

Zika-free noises in my head

I’m spending a lot of my day sitting and wondering, watching the world go by. Just like they do in Cuba. More than a month

Sugar, sugar

I read somewhere, I think it was one of the Shardlake novels, that back in Henry VIIIth’s time, sugar was such a sign of wealth

Meet Hector

I like to eavesdrop. It’s not something I deliberately set out to do. There’s no conscious decision – Oh, today’s Saturday. I think I’ll go

Cowboys are my weakness

Dawson City, in the Yukon, with its dirt roads, wooden sidewalks, and swing-door saloons took me back in time to a world I’d liked to

La Boca (2) Sundowners

Back in the day, I would watch various TV dramas like Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon Crest, and note how the rich enjoyed their preprandial G&T

La Boca (1) Living with the locals

Any opportunity to do what the locals do, anything that lets me step aside from being a tourist, anything that makes a memory that hasn’t

Buried in Cienfuegos

I’ve heard the stories. A sister dying in Ireland a minute after her brother died in Australia (they say he picked her up on his

Evidence of wealth

It’s hard to get my head around the idea that life can exist with out classes. Yes, I know there are the favoured and the

2+2=5

I wasn’t going mad. I saw  2+2=5 a number of times on the walls of central Havana and couldn’t for the life of me figure

Decidedly uncomfortable with religion

Top of my list of places to visit in Havana was the island of Regla, and a neighbourhood home to the Santería religion. From the