Havana's Old Churches

Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate ConceptionGlorious old cathedral in Havana's main (Plaza Catedral) square
(Pic by Natalie Hitchens)

"The Bells, the bells"
 San Francisco church cloisters

Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception
Fabulous door details in the main cathedral
(Pic by Natalie Hitchens)

Inside the Greek church round the back of San Francisco square
(Pic by Natalie Hitchens)

Vaulted ceiling in the cathedral

Cloisters of San Francisco of Assisi church
(Pic by Natalie Hitchens)

Small Greek church near San Francisco square
(Pic by Natalie Hitchens)

HDR scene from inside the old church in Plaza del Christo

Jigsaw panorama taken inside Havana's old cathedral
(set the camera to small JPEG (because the assembled file will be BIG), focus to manual, metering to manual, then shoot multiple images all around you (this was made up from 28 pics) and the software puts it all together. More or less. But you always get an interesting shape around the edges!

View through San Francisco to the cloister beyond

Not sure what this was - it looks like a collection of Bishop's wardrobes!

Quiet and coolness in one of Havana's churches

Inside the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception

Homestay, Cuban Style

Thanks to a booking mistake I made, we were left with one night unaccounted for this week (the Hotel Raquel where we had been staying for the week was fully booked) so arranged to stay in a Casa Particulares, a Cuban homestay for one night which was a bit of an adventure. This is the tiny living room.

Entrance hallway to the block of apartments on Calle Ygnacio in Habana Viejo, the Old city

Yours truly surveying the passers-by in the street.
The cobblestones were so rough in this area that I lost both wheels on my suitcase.

The electric shower arrangement.
It worked but the apartment, which cost about $45 for a night, was tiny.
You'd knock a cat senseless if it was swung about...

Here's the tiny kitchen (we chose NOT to cook!)
Just big enough for one small person to stand in.
Three huge water tanks were suspended up above in the ceiling.
Overall it was very quite quiet place but the size made us both feel somewhat guilty seeing as we are building a new house with a kitchen/living area that's larger than the entire 'particular'...

The Inevitable Cars of Cuba

One of the star attractions in Cuba is of course the antiquity – the fact is, the country has suffered under trade embargoes since shartly after the revolution in 1959.

To us, the Western visitor, the sight of row upon row of 50’s American limousines cruising the Malecon seafront is like being in a movie set. All those film noir productions with Bogey and Bacall driving cars the size of the average living room.

To Cubans it’s a symbol of their plight – being stuck in limbo while powers far more aggressive than their own government try to change their way of life through embargoes and other forms of political skulduggery.

Politics aside, these vehicles not only provide the locals with cheap taxi rides across town, but also the promise of much needed hard currency in a nation that is only now considering free enterprise as a way to generate income for the masses. You can hire car and driver for about $30-40 for an hour. I think this is good value – a taxi to Sydney airport from where I live costs about $60 and chances are the driver speaks worse English than a Cuban…

Anyway, most of the cars seen here are hybrid – not because they generate electricity, but, because there have been no spares available for 57 years, they comprise a mix of different bits pirated from other vehicles; diesel, petrol, Japanese, Ford, Kia, you name it, it’s thrown together to keep the vehicles going. When you start editing images of these cars, especially ones shot and HDR’d, you notice that no one panel is the same colour as another. One of the car images here looks as if the bodywork have been repaired with 10 different types of paint and body filler, the result more patchwork quilt than seamless paint job.