There are no sirens, loud motorbikes or thundering traffic. My next lens purchase will be the GF250mm when it gets released sometime later this year. Bottom: The 110mm lens is perfect for the close ups. I held my GFX 50s with the 32-64mm lens 6ft above my head using my monopod and triggered the camera with the self timer set to 10 seconds. Top: Javier, our fixer in Cuba, is driving the car with Rocio in the back. Joy ride. We hired this classic 1955 Ford Fairlaine convertible for a few shots. Apparently crime is almost non existent and I felt safer in Havana than I have done in any other capital city.ġ4. Perhaps there are eyes and ears everywhere but I saw very little police presence and no military personnel in the three weeks that I was touring around Cuba. Read this if you want to a brief account of the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs invasion and other juicy bits of Cubas recent past. Some 300,000 people fled Cuba for Florida and still today there is a big Cuban community of expats in Miami. This meant that the Cuban economy could begin to work for poorer Cubans instead of corrupt upper-classes. Big businesses were nationalised and land reform limited the size of farms. He wanted to remove the stranglehold that US business had on the economy. Batista fled the country in 1959 and Castro formed a liberal nationalist government. By 1958, the revolution had spread throughout Cuba, culminating in the fall of Havana in early 1959. In 1956, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara gathered a force of guerrilla fighters and started a revolutionary war against government forces. The Batista regime was extremely unpopular with the Cuban people. What Cubans will gain will be far more important to them than the loss of their quaint ‘time stands still’ lifestyle. My guess is if the trade embargo with the US is lifted, the beautiful balance that exists in Cuba will be lost forever. So far there seems to be a happy medium between state supported entrepreneurship and socialism. How long this artwork will stay relevant to the next generation of Cubans will be interesting to see. The revolution art is big, bold and well maintained. The late 1950s revolution led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara is kept alive and celebrated with propaganda artwork. This symbolism and artwork of the revolution is everywhere you go. However a word of warning if you are going to visit Cuba, don’t expect great coffee. The chefs and bar staff were all keen to impress with their skills. The food options in the tourist restaurants were not quite up to Western standards but they were very close. There were no Dyson hand driers yet but there was soap available. The guide books for Cuba said take a loo roll everywhere as paper is in short supply on the island but to be honest the main hotels and restaurants were very well equipped indeed. They live on as daily transport too and are not confined to collectors lockups. Apparently these cars are worth far more in Cuba than they would fetch in the USA. That’s $250,000 per year with a few of drivers sharing the work. I was expecting to see clunkers and bangers but a restored 1950s piece of Americana in Cuba can earn its owner $50 per hour as tourist transport. The original V8 engines were replaced with diesel engines in the early 1990s after the break up of the USSR as petrol became scarce but the original V8s are being refitted once again now that the tourist dollar can fund the fuel required. It’s a refreshing change from the black, silver, grey or white cars produced in mainland Europe. There are thousands of classic American cars in Cuba and most have now been restored.
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