Spring has Sprung...sorta

    It's time I did a post about the latter days of winter. At the most miserable time of a long dragged out winter, Me and d'missus joined the flock and flew south for a week of bliss and summer fun in the sun. As luck would have it we ran into a good week of weather and it was lovely.
Having done Mexico some years ago, and Puerto Rico last fall we decided to go to the Island of Cuba! This place has always been kind of mysterious to me, conjouring visions of Grandfather's tales of the voyages he and shipmates had taken years before, when they loaded up their schooners with dried salt cod pickled the way the 'West Indie Fish' was made. Ah, the melodic strains of music filling the cobblestoned streets of Old Havana, the drinking grounds of Papa Hemmingway, the sounds of the surf as the North Atlantic, so cruel and cold further north, pounds the shoreline in a neverending roar.
     Yes, Cuba, the land of Castro, land of Che and the Revolution that thumbed its ass at the American War Machine and the Chambers of Greed. The land of poverty and joy, of happy people getting on with their lives in a beautiful part of the earth. Well to make a long story just a bit shorter, I will resist the temptation to go on and on about the history and the things to see and do. Instead I'll post a few pics taken while there.

You may have read or heard of Hemmingway's story "The Old Man and the Sea". Well, this is a photo of the very man that inspired the tale. It hangs on the wall with many interesting shots of Papa and Company. This is in the lobby of the Hotel where Hemmingway lived for several years...and not far from the Floridita Club, the Cradle of the Daiquiri.

This vehicle is the tank that Fidel Castro used to fire on the USS Houston during the mercenary invasion at Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

The 'Fast Delivery' truck is the one the revolutionaries used to storm the Government. If you look closely you will notice the many bullet holes in the panel walls. The odd looking items to the right are two homemade tanks that Castro had built. Both were made by welding steel protection onto farm equipment. Luckily for them the tanks were not needed and so were never used in defense.

We took loads more pics while on the island but I can show all them to you at some other time...maybe...if you want. Let me know!