Our trip to Cuba was not to take photographs, it was to help with the Christmas Bird Count, but Cuba is a photographers dream. I had to take a few snaps. In our free time Janice and I did as much wandering as we could. Our routine went something like this – gather at 6:00 am for coffee and some sort of bread and ham breakfast, travel or bird for the morning, do a group lunch and then explore in the afternoon and gather again at dinner time. We hit three main regions – Havana, Viñales to the west and down the the swamps around Playa Larga and The Bay of Pigs. If you are an easy traveller – one who does not mind fixing toilets and the possibility of not having hot water, get to Cuba! As far as the Christmas Bird Count goes, hopefully our work annually documenting birds in designated regions will help with conservation efforts and encourage additional tourism and money for their parks.

This post contains images from Havana – yes, the cars are really everywhere. The following posts includes a little of what we saw on the way to and at Viñales, the area around the Zapata Swamp and the Bay of Pigs and our last excursion to the National Botanical Garden outside of Havana. I did not shoot images everyday since I wanted to focus on the count, but these posts include a few of the more than 120 species we saw.