A tornado in Havana

When we left for our trip to Cuba and Mexico on the 19th of January, my plan was to blog about our adventures as I usually do when we travel.  But the very first time I opened my laptop in the Cuban town of Trinidad about the beginning of our tour in Cuba I discovered that my computer was failing. Before I could even post to the blog, the thing had crashed.

So if you were waiting and wondering what was happening, that's the reason there have been no posts about our trip. Fortunately (for me at least) my camera still functioned. And now, here I am six weeks later trying to remember some of what we experienced on this trip. It's a lot easier to write about things as they happen, but since I have several hundred photos to look at, I will attempt to write a bit about what we saw and experienced.

The photo above was taken on day 10 of our Cuba tour. The tour that took us from Havana to Cienfuegos, to Trinidad, to Viñales and back to Havana was winding up and we were sitting on a rooftop at a little farewell gathering. As the party wound up it started to rain and the wind came up. While walking home it got more gusty and windy and just before we made it to the front door of our casa particular  I tripped on a big hole in the sidewalk and fell on my face.  My injuries were fairly minor, only some scrapes and bruises. Harry and a bystander helped me get the rest of the way home just as the power went out for the rest of the night.

It wasn't until the next day that we discovered that a tornado had come through Havana, a very rare occurence.  Some of our group were in a taxi on the Malecon when the wind came up and experienced waves inundating the car. Violet, the 81 year old intrepid traveler from our tour said she thought she was a goner. We were all ok, but three people in Havana died, cars were overturned, and hundreds of people injured.  (See Tornado in Cuba)

This is the only photo I have from Cuba to date. It was sent along with some others by the intrepid Violet. But tomorrow I will get my computer back from the repair shop and I should be able to view the pictures taken on our trip. My plan is to do a few short posts of mainly photos to show you some of what we saw. I'll try not to bore you.





This is what the Malecon in Havana looked like the day after the storm.