Photos of everything else! The tallest bridge in Cuba

A lot of random holes in the ditches.

I hate taking photos of people in other countries. I feel like I am exploiting them every time i do it. I did take a few though because… well.. I had too.

This is the band that we made friend with at the resort – The people were sneaking in to the neighbouring campsite resort  in a most un-sneaky manner. They were laughing their heads off  the whole time.

We saw a lot of epic sunsets/sunrises.

I am rocking out at a wedding later today, but I took a tonne of photos of our peeps doing stuff on beaches and junk. So here they are.

Josh was not going to get eaten by a sea monster there but it sorta looked like it. :)
Us rocking out in Havana.

Shannon & Josh & a Cuban tractor  - – - Ed trying hard to smuggle WMD’s onto our plane.

The last day on the beach we watched what we hoped would be an epic thunder storm roll in. It instead rolled past us and out to sea. The clouds were epic however!

Cuba is known for it’s old cars and such but I found the old & new work trucks to be just as fascinating.There were many scooters at our resort. Kim & Ed rented a couple but Coaxial & I walked about that day instead.

These were (like to many photos from this week) shot from the window of a tour bus. Despite using a Circ-polarizer  the window reflections are the cause of the blotchy sky here. We were on our way to Havana for the day and we passed one of Cuba’s power plants.

As you may have all noticed, I was not here last week. I was instead in beautiful & warm Cuba for Shannon’s Week Long Birthday Cuba Trip. This is not the first time that I have ventured to Cuba (it is in fact the 3rd) but it is the first time that I wasn’t there for work. Not having to constantly worry about camera gear/photos/shot cards/un-shot cards/not getting sick, hurt, or dead/offending the parents of clients with drunken antics/etc… make for a much more entertaining trek. I was also not on the internet in anyway shape or form for the entire week, which has not really happened before..um….well…I was on the internet. I have obviously been offline before, but for a couple of days at most, & even then I would find a way to poke my nose in, if just for a second, and see what was going on. Not this time, this time I didn’t look at anything internet, social media, or even news related for the week. My phone didn’t really come of airplane mode & I didn’t even take a laptop with me.

Unlike Darren I had a completely culture free week of gluttony that has left me with a relaxed attitude and quite a bit of healthy guilt about my current life state. (and we all know that guilt always leads to positive changes, right?) As such I am going to blog some random photos about Cuba for about a week, but if you are looking for any sort of deep discourse on the meaning of life, Communism, art, or materialism, then you have come to the absolute wrong place. I just have some pretty pictures of stuff! No more and no less.  So here we go, a week of CUBA!!

Having spent the better part of yesterday in airports and on airplanes I thought I would start the Cuba photos off with the ones in from/of the Airplanes

We went to see a couple of films at VIFF this week. First we went to see Cuba. Great doc that was filled with interviews and the like with some of the people that were involved in the revolution. There was some footage from Castro and other things like that but the bulk of the footage was interviews with the everyday run of the mill people, people like the court stenographer during Castro’s trial and other people that had a small part that turned out to be history changing. The thing that I took from this film was that one person can change the course of history. One small seemingly insignificant decision is all it takes to change the destiny of a nation, and the entire world for that matter. An example was when Castro was caught after the failed attack on the military armory. He was being escorted to jail by a man (I don’t remember the man’s name) and they were stopped by a corrupt policeman that wanted to “escort” Castro to jail, meaning he wanted to kill him. While it was the norm for this to happen and most of the corrupt police would have gladly done so this man insisted that Castro was to stand trial and refused the corrupt man’s request. The single decision of one man changed the course of history. The film was filled with other examples of single acts that looking back changed the course of history but seemed small and insignificant at the time.

The second was a film (well three shorts actually) called Tokyo. Crazy and absurd movies of complete brilliance. I can not and will not even attempt to describe them. You must see it. If it isn’t playing at the fest again to try and rent it/watch it online/download it. Pure awesome.

I have been going out of my way the last 4 or 5 years to avoid all thing to do with indie film and the like. Mostly because I will get the itch and drop everything and make crazy films again. All good except crazy films don’t pay rent, and I just doubled my rent I hope that I can do something about that this year or next. It is all about the time and I have little of it.