Pirates brought me to Camagüey. Not in the way that you might have hoped but bear with me while I set the scene a bit anyway. Currently Cuba’s third largest city, Camagüey sits about three quarters of the way down the island East from Havana. It used to be on the Northern coast, but its position near the sea turned out to be convenient for … Continue reading What’s that huge knife for? (a Cuban roadside adventure)
I landed in Havana the day Big Raúl relinquished the Cuban presidency, ending the 59-year long Castro dynasty that managed to survive an American blockade, the collapse of their economic mainstay, and apparently 600+ assassination attempts. The western media were calling the occasion “enormous”. The people of Havana seemed not to have noticed. Life and the living of it was the priority today as with … Continue reading Your Girl in Havana
This one time in Nicaragua I attended a pool party at a popular backpacking hostel in the beach town of Las Peñitas. Conversing with a bunch of young travellers over many cans of Toña, a pattern began to emerge that I couldn’t really comprehend. These people have been all over South America, they’ve been to Panama, Costa Rica, and they’re now in Nicaragua. Next they’re … Continue reading Don’t Skip El Salvador, Sillies
I have been looking forward to today for a pretty long time. I persuaded my friend to drive us for 11 hours through batshit insane Honduras to get here, and we were up and showered by 7am, driving from our sleepy little Oasis hostel at the beach town of Las Peñitas to nearby León to meet a dude called Aris at his office. Aris operates an … Continue reading Volcano-Surfing Nicaragua
There are two ways to get from La Tortuga Verde, El Salvador’s most chilled waterfront paradise, to León, home of Nicaragua’s only surfable volcano. One of these doesn’t involve driving through Honduras, so that’s what we tried first. We rocked up to La Unión where there were many boats in the ‘harbour’ and a lot of boatmen twiddling their thumbs in a nearby bar who we hoped would jump at … Continue reading The Hazards of Honduras
I read about five minutes ago that less than 0.1% of British people have been to El Salvador, which, apart from making me feel all smug for apparently being part of my country’s travel elite, made me pretty sad for the remaining 64,370,000. This figure may even be generous given the likelihood that many of those who claim to have been to this place were … Continue reading San Salvador: The Best City You’ve Never Been To
the lost scot 