Quieres comprar un cigaro?

First stop Havana and the impact of Castro's 50 year regime is immediately noticeable...where we usually see Coke & Pepsi ad's, endless variations of Che & Castro posters and wall painting extolling the virtues of La Revolucion surrounded us.

Over the course of two weeks in Cuba we stayed in various casa particulares, which are essentially the same as an Irish Bed and Breakfast, but with max 2 rooms per house.  These families then offer everything they can on top of your bed cause of course this is the income they're not telling Castro's beanies about!

Competition won for drinking the most mojitos in Havana!

After weeks of debaucherous going away parties at home, Paddy's weekend in Cork almost finishing us off before we even began (muchas gracias to everybody, I think we almost had too much fun) we were pretty broken by the time we laid our heads in Havana.  The first couple of days around Havana we just wandered around the cobbled stone streets pretending we knew what we were getting ourselves in for taking off from family, friends and the real world for 12 months...it wasn't as strange as I thought it would be, but a little disorienting.