Restored American Classic Car in Trinidad Cuba

I pictured this beautifully restored American car in the city of Trinidad with the Museum of the Revolution in the background.  While I love cars myself (and I would like to find a way of sharing mine) I’m hoping that two things don’t happen with the thawing of US Cuban relations. The first is that these old cars don’t just get scrapped or exported to collectors in the rest of the world. They are now part of Cuba’s heritage and as such should be restored and used in Cuba. Secondly, I hope that Cuba doesn’t get flooded with new cars as that is the last thing it needs. Many of the streets are small and narrow and the Cuban cities don’t need to end up looking like any capitalist city. As Cuba is starting from scratch as it were it needs an organised scheme of shared car ownership where cars can be booked for an hour or more when needed and are placed conveniently throughout towns and cities. This in association with a decent public transport system should keep the streets clear, safe and clean and not tie up money on these expensive items which for most people sit idle for much of the day. The crazy world of the West is like it is because of poorly designed, inconvenient and expensive public transport systems. My hope that as in most other things that Cuba does that it again dares to be different. Copyright Junagarh Media, http://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk.

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Bus Station Art – Spare Parts from old Buses Coro Venezuela

I’m sure that if you welded together a load of scrap iron and then painted it in the UK or some other countries and displayed it somewhere that you would get paid a fortune for what your average trainee welder probably gets paid a pittance for. Yes, I know I’m very cynical. Maybe in Coro, Venezuela where this photo  was taken the person or persons who created this wonderful piece of work were too or maybe they were just paid for doing a decent day’s work like the rest of us. Art is for everyone isn’t it? We did think however that at the time there was very little difference between the buses running and the ones hanging on the wall. On one bus we experienced a dramatic bang from some suspension component failing. The trouble was that the used part that they replaced it with didn’t look all that different from the component being removed. But that’s how a lot of the world still works. Copyright Junagarh Media, http://www.junagarhmedia.co.uk.