Setting up today Sunday 15th September.
Ticket, Insurance, Bundle from Tour company, Visa to Cuba arrived safely.
This trip I am travelling with 15 others and a guide for two weeks to Cuba. This is my fourth adventure in travel since turning 50. On two of these journeys I travelled alone but to Italy where I have a command of Italian and lots I know I wanted to see.
This time I was gifted the trip by my mother. She has known for some time I wanted to go to Cuba and I had hoped to go with salsa dancing class but the trip was postponed. I went back to Italy instead. I put my travel book on Cuba somewhat sadly onto my shelf. Now I am leaving in three weeks' time. 10th October. I was amazed at how difficult it might be to get there. How the embargo means that airlines do not advertise here that they carry people there and I will make more enquiries when I get there about how to manage flights from other South American countries.
I am travelling via Canada which I think is pathetic and ridiculous, but I will not set foot in the USofA for political and ethical reasons; the appalling promiscuity of gun violence and ownership, the manufacture of weapons and land mines - the whole military complex; the private prison system that incarcerates too many people of African American descent; the horrendous medical system and general aversion to social democracy; the hypocrisy that spends oodles of public money on roads and arms but not on health, education and housing. My own country is flawed enough as it is, and I am not going to spend a single monetary unit in the country that is the home of the hegemonic maker of sugar drinks and buys up water in India to the detriment of its farmers. Enough said.
Obviously a good candidate to examine Cuba. But I am very aware that this is also a country with restrictions/political prisoners run by an ideology..as we are all. This is what I would like to explore, what really is a 'free' society, and might it be any good for people to really live in one? Is is actually impossible and what are the balances needed between social responsibility and individual autonomy? One of the big questions.
