Merry Christmas from Cuba !

Lots of these old cars everywhere. They may look nice but listening to them, you really wouldn't want to be doing a long journey in one ! 

All the hotels on Cayo Coco are built on a mangrove swamp. We did suffer with a few mosquitoes but nowhere near the amount we expected. Hardly suprising as every morning these sprayers were seen leaving the hotels. They must have sprayed the hell out of the grounds each night when everyone was in bed.  

Now these are two random pictures I know. We stopped with our guide, Paulino and his son Ray, at a restaurant for lunch. The food was fabulous, far better than our 5* hotel. Pork, rice and beans, salad and a beer and rates in our top 5 of food from our world travels. Within the restaurant, there was a small petting zoo (rabbits and guinea pigs). Very random to see a large white rabbit sat in a dish drainer tied to a tree with guinea pigs.  All were totally tame and the rabbit never made any attempt to get off the drainer. There were many bantam chickens around and these sat under the table waiting for anything that fell !  

Yes, these are train lines and the last station was at our restaurant.  All the trips stopped here and they catered for over 100 people each lunch time. But when we stopped we were the only people there. Could you see our trains running on tracks with that much grass growing? We were waiting for a steam train that was due but after an hour it still hadn't arrived, and it never did turn up. Pity as Simon would have loved to see it. 

They have the oldest tractors but all still working. They don't compare to the massive, high tech farm machinery we now have here.  

This was on the causeway that connected Cayo Coco to the mainland. The causeway is 27km long and took 2 years to build. Very impressive!  Birds were everywhere and we made many stops. There was hardly any traffic as no-one lives on Cayo Coco. All the hotel workers are bussed each day to work and home and Cuban's can only enter the cays with special permission.

There were 100's of Flamingos, standing out as huge lines of pink in the distance, everywhere we looked. Also American White Pelicans in the distance, another new bird !

Our beach, it was simply fabulous as you can see. Wished we were still there !  

This was the garden behind our room. We asked for a ground floor room with a garden view and we were not disappointed. We fed the birds each day with bread and had red-legged thrushes, catbirds, mockingbirds, a water thrush and a multitude of warblers.

Happy Christmas !

Christmas day on the beach xx

Our hotel, Melia, Cayo Coco. One of the nicest hotels on the cays. It was simply gorgeous. 

Brave Rice and Mexican Arm for me please ! 

The gardeners at the Melia made these each morning. Quite an art, and a lovely gesture.  We had quite a few in our room by the end of the holiday. A basket of flowers, a couple of crickets, a fish on a line and a bird. 

The mangrove inbetween the hotels. The bird highlight was a single spotted sandpiper.  

Our first day exploring and we found a Cuban Black Hawk from this path. Infact we saw it most days around the hotel.  

Melia, Cayo Coco.  

We had a barn owl around this area most evenings. You can just see the West Indian Whistling Ducks that seem to be just here. American Kestrels lived on the climbing frame in the distance. We never saw anyone on that the whole time we were there and to be honest, it looked death defying !