Viva Cuba!

hello everyone!! hope this finds all of you well and enjoying the holidays. it's been awhile and i'm seizing the holidays as a good excuse to get in touch with an update, another installment from the travelogues of susie g.

it's been over two years and i'm still battling a very serious illness. the travel bug. after a four month hiatus in d.c. to work and replenish my travel funds and see friends and family, i found my way to cuba earlier this month...that little landmass off the coast of florida that has been the subject of so much controversy. revolutions, communism, fidel castro, trade embargos, cuban missle crisis, bay of pigs invasion, guantanemo bay, elian gonzales...all random historical landmarks floating around in my head with no real context to piece them together. what's the big deal with this tiny little island anyway? so i went to see what the fuss was all about, not quite knowing what i would find or how a single female traveler would fare.

well, i'm here to tell the tale and in a nutshell, cuba is one of the most fascinating, confusing, and safe places i've ever been to. while i can't even begin to uncover the many, many layers that make cuba cuba after a ten day visit, i tried my best to get a (perhaps superficial) feel for the place...a very poor country in a difficult political situation, with a very rich culture, fascinating history, gorgeous beaches, beautiful and educated people, and incredible music...


stepping into cuba is like stepping into a 50-year time warp...horse-drawn carriages are still a common mode of public transportation and many of the cars (the very few that exist) are meticulously restored dodges and buicks from the 50s. there's not a
golden arches or walmart to be found, and instead of coca-cola ads plastered everywhere like every other latin american country i've been
to, the 45-year old revolution, fidel castro, and che guevara are celebrated from every possible billboard and building wall. internet and cellphones are hard to come by, as is anything else remotely "modern". the average monthly salary is about what you spent on dinner last night: $13.

on the other hand, they are light-years ahead in some respects. cuba boasts some of the most impressive literacy rates, education, and health care systems, accessible to everyone free of cost. the arts are venerated and alive. it's an incredibly diverse society with a healthy mix of skin colors and heritages (and somehow they all happened to get the goodlooking gene!)...european, hispanic, african...yet there appears to be absolutely no racial divide...it was the most racially integrated place i've ever seen.

Cuban school children

and the bewildering things continue...

oppression, fear, and secret police are a daily reality, yet the streets are exploding with music and dance and laughter.

the people are dirt poor, yet educated and healthy. it is one of the
safest places i've ever been to and there was hardly a single beggar
to be seen on the streets. it is perhaps safer to walk around havana
at night than my hometown of washington d.c.

Old-school fire trucks still in good working order

you could cut cuban/u.s. tensions with a knife, yet every cuban i
met was nothing but kind and generous to this americana (at least
after the disagreeable experience at customs, where i was randomly
plucked out of line and detained, questioned, and searched for almost
an hour...do i fit the counter-revolutionary profile or something?
what gives?) they love old american cars and baseball almost as much as we do and the u.s.
dollar is unofficially their primary currency.

opinions about fidel run the gamut...some think he's a legitimate
hero, mounting a valiant struggle against "the empire" (aka the united
states), while one cuban i met likened what he's done to cuba to
owell's "1984" totalitarian state. take your pick.

and then there are the little things, like why is the 24-hour burger
joint closed at 7pm on a tuesday night?

however you cut it, cuba is a beautiful country with many
wonderful and sad layers... a proud, vibrant, educated people in a
very complicated and frustrating situation that i can't even begin to
understand after just ten days. you could contemplate forever what
impact the interplay of communism, capitalism, revolutionary ideals
gone bad, and the u.s. trade embargo have on the whole situation,
what's going to happen when fidel dies, etc...but how about i leave
all that to the politicians and the historians.

The Che Guevara monument in Santa Clara

as luck would have it, it worked out to meet up with two of my good girlfriends who i taught with in antigua, tia and jackie. they were traveling with a band of other girlfriends and welcomed me right into their crew for a few days in varadero and havana, it was an absolute blast.

Good times with the girls in Varadero

At La Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway's old haunt

Dinner with my friend Jonathan's parents. He's a friend from Cuba who defected and now lives in Antigua and hasn't seen his family in over 5 years. I smuggled some gifts and money over to them from him. Shhhhh, don't tell Bush, he might not like that...

Havana Streets

and now i somehow find myself in another very different world, in germany with my family visiting my brother and his family for the
holidays. we've been busy touring a few medieval german towns and
their famous christmas markets...huge outdoor festivals where people gorge themselves on bratwurst and fight off the cold with a few too many glasses of hot spiced red wine. we ventured to the austrian alps over christmas and i tried on my snowboard for the first time in a few years, something for which my body still hates me. and we were incredibly relieved to hear from my sister jen and her boyfriend, who are in thailand for the holidays and had a near miss with the tragic
tsunami over that way. so in the end, it was a very merry christmas
for the gaskins.

i'll return to the states in february to do some more time
as "corporate susie" (as some friends refer to my alter-persona back
in the states that funds my wanderlust). hope to see some of you then,
or before then for a few of you in europe.

always love to hear news from you guys...hope this finds each of you
well and enjoying a wonderful holiday!


more photos: http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=62x8zgbr.5j6jrkqb&x=1&y=-7fzzzk

Argentina and Beyond...

hello everyone! i figured after a few months, it was high time for an update. i've almost been avoiding it because there's almost TOO
much to tell! my mind and my eyes have soaked up so many amazing things and amazing people, almost to the point of saturation, i can hardly hope to convey it all in a simple email. but i shall try...

before skipping ahead to my coffee trials in chile, i left you in costa rica, where i spent a good bit of time on the beach, as every
good tourist should do, even tried out surfing. my last few days i made a last-minute decision and hopped on a bus to nicaragua where the prices were cut in half and i was reminded that, ah yes, i am in the middle of the developing world. poverty is visible everywhere and i'm riding on charming, rikity old chicken buses again (aka old american school buses that my parents probably rode to school), and the catcalls become familiar again (they're actually making rapid progress on this particular front...instead of actually whistling they now have mechanized whistling sounds installed in their vehicles at the push of a button). it's an interesting contrast crossing from the relatively developed world of costa rica into nicaragua.

i spent a few days in granada, a colonial town that looks more like new orleans than central america, and isla ometepe, a very poor, beautiful, virtually untouched island in the middle of lake nicaragua where the primary mode of transportation is still the horse, and the people are absolutely beautiful and open in spite of their incredibly impoverished situation. their isolation on an island has rendered them relatively untouched by the violence in nicaragua, especially during the 80's, and made for an interesting contrast from mainland nicaragua.

crossing from central america into buenos aires was even more of a
stark contrast. i might as well have arrived in europe--paris, madrid, rome, take your pick--the thought actually occured to me...did i get on the right plane? cafès everywhere, old european architecture. even the coffee spanked of europe, a proper expresso served up in those cute tiny little cups on a saucer, a little layer of foam at the top, served with a cookie on the side, cloth napkins, tablecloths, waiters in smart uniforms. you can sit in a cafè for hours sipping on a $1 cup of aforementioned coffee and not get dirty looks from the waitress trying to turn your table over. you can get a steak as big as your arm for the price of a mcdonald's extra value meal and the wine is incredible and costs the same (sometimes less) as water. i tried out my two left feet at tango dancing and fell in love with it. it's an intoxicating dance, still a true art form here.

i went to an argentinian soccer (futbol)
game...they take their soccer so seriously there that my seat in the
fan section was borderline dangerous. my friend vivi and i were a rare sight as women braving this notorious section. she was at a game last year where they had to call in the riot police and they fired smoke bombs into the rambunctious crowd to clear everyone out. this game was a bit more tame, although the sight of the fans above us relieving themselves onto the opposing team's fans below was a first for me. gracias a dios, i was sheltered by the overhang. (although at one point a highly suspect substance dripped on my head from above. don't want to think about it, don't want to think about it.) apparently there was a sighting of diego maradona on the field at one point, a worldwide soccer legend. not so exciting for me since i wouldn't have known who he was if he came up and starting chatting with me on the street, but apparently it was a big deal. bodily fluids and rioting aside, it was a blast.


and the people...this is always the thing that ultimately makes or
breaks a place, isn't it? travelers and argentinians alike, they were amazing. from the argentinian husband and wife i met at a tango show who invited me and a friend over for dinner to meet their kids who are my age and musicians as well, to the great travelers i met in my hostel, to the kind waiter in the cafe on the corner, my experience was unbelieveably positive. i'd actually heard rumors about the "snobbishness" of argentinians, and reports of it being a dangerous country given the financial crisis it was hit with three years ago and are still pulling out of, but in my experience nothing could be further from the truth.

after almost three weeks, i finally pryed myself away from buenos
aires for mendoza, argentina's wine country, where i tried out
paragliding for the first time and spent an amazing few days in a cabin in the mountains with some friends. then a brief stint in chile, then back to the south of argentina. i'm in bolivia now after wrestling with the flu for the past couple weeks (not fun), and am headed for peru soon for a few weeks. i know your eyes must be glazing over right about now so i'll save all that for later, i'm not going to try to tackle too much in one email, even though i could easily go on and on.

if you're interested in checking out more photos. http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=62x8zgbr.24t8ne8f&x=1&y=-z1tdn6

valparaiso, chile

Email to the fam...

Email to the fam...

hey fam! i've promised mom and dad that i would keep in touch with
them every few days as i'm all alone out here in this big bad world,
so i thought i'd add you guys so i can keep you updated at the same
time.

so firstly and most importantly, i'm still alive, proven by the fact
that you're receiving this email. the past four days i spent in a
little surf town called mal pais. i lucked out and stumbled upon this
great little house renting out rooms. most everybody there were
surfers staying for a month or two and everyone kind of operated like
a family, hanging out together, making meals together, etc, and i was
welcomed right in. i had to sleep in a hammock for the first couple
days until a bed opened up, which was kind of fun and rustic...but
also pretty darn uncomfortable, i'm not gonna lie. i tried out surfing
for a couple days which was super-fun and i actually got up a few
times. and...mom and dad, are you sitting down for this... i got my
schnozz pierced last night...ouch! but it was worth the pain, i love
it! i figured, i had to wait until i was 12 to get my ears pierced, at
24 i should be allowed another piercing with your blessing, right?
so, i think i can say i've officially lived the live of a surfer for a
few days...did nothing but surf, lay in a hammock, eat, read, and
pierce holes in my body. super-fun but four days was enough.
don't know how these guys do it everyday for months!

i'm in a town called liberia en route to granada, nicaragua, a cool
little colonial town near the border. i made a really last-minute
decision literally as i was stepping on the bus to make the trek up
to nicaragua. wasn't part of the original plan, but i've been hearing
good things, hope it's worth it. meeting up with some friends in san
jose for her birthday on friday, then i fly down to buenos aires.

more later, internet cafe's closing, love you guys!

-susie

Pura Vida!

greetings from costa rica! i've been long out of touch with many of
you and thought it was high time to let you guys know what i've been
up to and where in the world i am, albeit in a dreadfully impersonal
mass email.

i'm currently in a town at the base of arenal volcano, one of the
world's most active and spectacular. it spews lava almost continually,
making for quite a fireworks show at night. that's the fun part of the
story. the not-so-fun part is that it's been cloudy and raining
nonstop ever since i arrived yesterday. but it's been great imagining
what's going on in the distance behind the dreary wall of gray and
wet. right. so today, instead of trekking through the rainforest
towards said volcano, i have time to touch base with all of you.

i've been back in antigua for the past two months, brushing up on my
spanish, planning my backpacking trip, and wrapping things up and
saying goodbye to the wonderful little town that was my home for the
past year. now i'm officially "on the road" for the next four months.
first stop...costa rica, the "gem" of central america (or something
like that), where toilet paper and soap in the bathroom are givens
instead of a pleasant surprise. it's readily apparent that costa rica
is quite a bit ahead of its neighbors as far as education (96% literacy
rate), conservation, and development, somehow managing to escape
the war-torn history this region is infamous for.

my first stop in cr...i hopped of the plane and boarded a bus straight for
sarapiqui to meet up with one of my best girls from university,
anna. we were incredibly lucky to have our inter-continental paths cross
as she and her mom and sister are living it up a this posh yoga retreat
this week. thusly, i got to live it up non-backpacker style with them for
a couple days, complete with sweet digs and zip-lining through the
rainforest.





aside from a bit too much rain and 80s music, costa rica agrees with
me quite well. i'll be here two more weeks and then fly down to south
america for three months to explore argentina, chile, bolivia, and
peru. after much debate, i decided to travel with my guitar, so i'll maybe
run into some opportunities to make a few bucks on the road, if not at
least a few free drinks and dinners.

i'll keep in touch with my adventures, wish me luck. hope you all are
doing well and i'd love to here from you all whenever...sometimes
emails make good company on the road.

pura vida!

susie