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Yesterday, it was the earthquake. Today, Prince Harry. What can the five kidnapped hostages and the CBS journalist do to gain more exposure in the British media for their ordeal?

Good on Harry, by the way, and it’s one up on the Royal Family. Shame on the British government cabinet for not sending one of their own abroad to fight on the frontlines.

It does, however, present a massive dilemma for the prince and security chiefs when he returns to the UK: he was probably safer fighting anonymously in the Afghan countryside than in London. Al-Qaeda only needs to bomb one of the clubs he goes to on a Friday night and they’ve got their ultimate prize. They could also kidnap him easily from Clarence House and then behead him like a pig.

Unless he stops going out, then he won’t be such an easy target but will he?!  Then again, public duties, religious ceremonies, charity functions, Six Nations matches….the possibilities and chances to assassinate him are endless. His exposure as a fighter ‘against the jihadists’ could be the beginning of a nightmare for us which is going to be very, very expensive to protect him for decades to come.  He should be stationed in Cyprus or the Falkland Islands for at least a decade and let people forget about him.

Wow, this is incredible!

His imposing brother only ’stepped aside’ a week or so ago, and we’ve had the first significant shift in policy from Raul Castro.

Cuba has apparently signed up to two legally-binding human rights agreements at the United Nations which will give its citizens more freedom of speech and more importantly, the right to travel abroad. When I was there, I learned that very few were allowed to have passports, so travelling abroad was not something that many people had done - not that many would’ve had the money to do so. But, I doubt there will now be a mass exodus of Cubans jumping onto Cubana Airlines immediately since it’ll be a long, drawn-out process to start issuing laws on travelling abroad. I don’t think anyone can afford their airfares anyway, but it’s a start.

Of course, once passports have been issued - or more likely, permission to leave the island has been granted - it could be quite tricky in the short-term to regulate those who can afford to leave - like, will they come back? Many countries such as America and Spain feel extremely iffy about Cubans who travel on a return ticket but never leave.  One way round the problem is for Cuba to improve economically - Cubans love their island and would give anything to return permanently.

Bleungberg has previously highlighted the plight of the five forgotten British kidnapped victims in Iraq, and will do so again in light of a video appearing on Al-Arabiya last night showing one of the hostages pleading for his release. They have been incarcerated now for nearly nine months, and yet, no one seems to give a toss here in Britain. It wasn’t helped by the fact that one little earthquake  has shifted all the attention away from Iraq again. This is just unacceptable. Similarly, the British  freelance reporter working for CBS is still missing. Yet, no one seems to care.

Greetings from New York. This is my first-ever visit to the city, and having now been here for a few days and seven inches of snow later, I can now understand why so many of you like it here / want to migrate here. Personally, it’s a great city, with superb food, and sure, I could live here. But I also find it slightly underwhelming is a sense that I’ve seen so much of it on TV or films or in the news all my life that on arrival, it’s as if I’d been here before. My own version is thus probably a bit different to yours in that I never knew the World Trade Centre as two massive sky-scrappers, but Ground Zero, or - if you don’t mind me saying - an enormous building site which it essentially is. When I stumbled upon it by accident the other night, that’s how I felt - a building site. Workers were laughing and joking inside, and passers-by were just that - passers-by. I tried to walk around it but - I’m sorry to say - I got enticed into this shop called Century 21 next to the site and ended up buying some underwear….I feel quite disrepectful for doing this but I do need a clean pair every day to get me through my 21 days in Turkey and Iran in April since there aren’t any laundrettes over there…..

Of course, what happened here a few days ago is lurking something at the back of my head. With that in mind, I treat every landmark as though it won’t be around the next time I visit. I know that sounds ridiculous and frankly, rather tasteless but, well, you never know. (I wouldn’t mind if Trump Tower or The Donald disappeared, however) On that note, I visited Aqueduct racetrack in Brooklyn today because they always threaten to close the place down and from what I saw, they should because it’s a complete dump. American racetracks, like train stations, are excellent places for getting a feel of a city’s ethnic and cultural mix because they attract all kinds of riff-raffs - and normally the worst kinds. Aqueduct was no exception - it was horrible. And sticking to the horsey-theme, the one thing/person which has annoyed me about New York has been that horsey-face woman, Sarah Jessica Parker - or ‘SJP’ as she irritatingly likes to be known. When I was in Stockholm last autumn, it was Eva Longoria’s face which adorned the city’s billboards for ‘Desperate Housewives’. Here, it’s ‘SJP’ for the new ‘Sex And The City’ movie which isn’t even out until the last day of May!! Why the hell have they started the advertising blitz for the film already? It must be awful. Another horsey-faced woman I’ve been thinking about has been the British singer Leona Lewis. There are loads of strip-clubs and porn shops near to my hotel here and I just think her song ‘Bleeding Love’ would be quite a good song to pole dance to: it has the right feel and rhythm for it.

I think I’ve strayed into far too many inappropriate territories here. Forgive me, I’ve been deprived of any kind of intellectual interaction for over three weeks and my mind is going crazy. This is my last stop on this brief trip around this part of the world and I cannot begin to tell you how much I’m looking forward to going back to London for a month or so. For a start, I’m sick of Spanish; I don’t want to hear it on the TV, on the bus, having to order food by speaking it, see it on a menu, or read it on any public notices. I’ll also be mightily relieved that I won’t be going anywhere near a hotel for at least a few weeks simply because I think they’re all dirty and the cleaners who clean them are deaf and useless at their jobs. Maybe it’s my bad Spanish, but how difficult is it to ask the cleaner NOT to clean your room every day? I put up the sign ‘Do Not Disturb’ and they still barge in asking whether I want my bed made. What is it with these people?! They get paid pittance and yet they seem to have this compulsion to clean. If you can do less work for the same wages, wouldn’t you? I don’t need my room cleaned every day because, quite frankly, it’s cleaner if they don’t clean it and also, it’s better for the environment if my towels aren’t washed every day. The way these people clean hotel rooms is horrific: the same cloth for the bathroom mirror, the table AND the cups you drink with. I don’t even know if they use the same wipe for every toilet seat in the hotel and it wouldn’t surprise me if they did. I’m talking Holiday Inns and Sheratons here and honestly, a crappy two-star hotel next door is probably as hygenic as whatever Renaissance-on-the-park shit.

So, time to say farewell to San Jose - again. You know something, the more I travel around this region, the higher I rate San Jose as a city. Yes, it’s ugly, dirty, full of rats and cockroaches BUT unlike many of its Central American rivals, it feels modern, plentiful, civilised, balanced, middle-class and more importantly, rather secure in itself. Its people are nice and trendy, and the food is the best in the region. I will miss a lot of things here - food aside - such as the credit-card culture (for everything), traffic lights which play the same six notes from Handel’s ‘See the conquering hero’ over and over again for blind pedestrians 24 hours a day, which must annoy residents close-by. Buses are cheap and plentiful, and the central market is awesome for wonderful food and strange smell of herbs and flowers. Also, pollo fritos, Quiznoz Sub’s strawberry-flavoured yogurts, gallo pintos, black bean soup from Chelles cafe, Bistec Argentina over at Sabana, the gym here at the Holiday Inn, Mas X Menos supermarket for its 5L waters and last but not least, the bakeries. Oh, the bakeries are a true delight. New York has a lot to live up to….I’m sure it’ll deliver!

Havana aside, I also spent a day in Panama City, and it was hot. Hot and expensive. And rather faceless. The canal was fun - but miles away from the city, and indeed, that was my main problem with Panama City: there was no real centre and everything was spread right out. For example, the Canal was a 25-minute cab ride from where I stayed and cost $5 on a good taxi, otherwise, double the fare!

My other gripe about the city was that it felt rather faceless. On the one hand, there were these beautiful, opulent skyscrappers for banks and hotels, piercing into the sky and could be seen from afar on approach to Tocumen Airport. There’s also a very nice area called San Felipe with its colonial structures and cobbled-street out west. In between however, laid all the shits: crumbling estates and quasi-shanty towns where the poor lived. Much like Guatemala City, the divide between rich and poor is massive and is something which is fairly prevalent in Central America. This therefore makes San Jose in Costa Rica rather balanced in that rich and poor work side-by-side, and walk side-by-side in a place which just looks shit throughout.

Final greetings from San Jose, Costa Rica, having just returned from a four-day trip to Havana and Panama City. (Can’t believe I missed Castro’s retirement by 26 hours!!) Two more days and I’m leaving the ‘hot’ for the ‘cold’, and straight into the Arctic blast of New York - 30 degrees the difference. That’s something to look forward to as I’m sick of Central America. I think three weeks is long enough in this part of the world and I can’t understand how people can do a year’s long backpacking trip around this region: don’t they get sick of the people? The undrinkable water? That you can’t throw toilet paper down the toilet even in some nice hotels? Yes, people here are nice and so on, but they can also be petulant, ill-disciplined and impatient. Honestly, I thought Chinese people were bad on planes with their bossing around, these Latinos though……

Anyway, good time to introduce you to E and Z, a middle-aged Cuban lesbian couple whom I befriended at an awful Chinese restaurant in Havana six hours before I wrote the e-mail in which I wanted Castro dead. He might have retired but will things change? One of you kindly wrote back saying that I was ‘walking in dangerous territories’ with that wish. I know some of you love Fidel and all the virtues that socialism and communism bring, and blame the US trade embargo for all the problems. However, you only need to spend one day in Havana to think otherwise. I’d had exactly 24 hours to make up my mind about Fidel before meeting those two ladies by chance, (the waiter tried to rip me off by short-changing me by $13 and E shouted at him on my behalf) and by then, I’d already concluded that Havana was some sick joke that was particularly cruel on the poor. Unlike other countries that I’d visited in the region, you can be poor - but at least you can buy simple things like toilet paper easily and at an affordable price. In Cuba, rich or poor, if they’ve run out, then they’ve run out, and is often the case not just with toilet paper, but just about everything. You see, nothing seems to work in Havana, and probably the rest of Cuba, too. I’m sure that until he’s really, really dead, nothing will change. The city’s beautiful, with lovely architecture and exquisite squares but you can only enjoy them during the day because Cuba has an energy shortage which means many roads and buildings are not lit up at night. Some street lamps only come on ten minutes after sunset, which makes the city a bit too dangerous as you could hardly see a thing - you could fall into a pothole or get mugged or get run over by a motorbike.

Cubans are said to be friendly, but I thought they were doing their utmost to rip me and other tourists off because they are so poor - expecting you to tip them, take them out for drinks or just give them stuff. But can you blame them? These people have to queue for everything - money, sweets, browsing at shoes, buses; their hands clutching these little grey ration books, trying to buy essential things that they really can’t afford. I guess the rate of inflation is low but with so little supply, daily lives become a chore. For example, a small carton of milk costs US$4 - an outrageous price no matter how rich you are. There’s no butter, and olive oil is $16 a bottle. Then, you are only allowed chicken or eggs on alternate days, and yogurts every four days. If authorities find out you’d obtained beef illegally, they can throw you in jail for 25 years (E said it’s better to kill a person), whilst pharmacies and medical care - something which Cuba is famous for worldwide - have empty shelves (see photos) or have doctors opting to take out a taxi license or become hotel porters as they can earn ten times more a month from tourists’ tips than for working in hospitals.

That’s why all my American clients in Costa Rica advised me to bring ’soaps, hotel shampoos, toilet papers and chocolate’ for the locals. So I did - for my host family (many open up their houses for foreigners to stay in…just another way to make money) but all they asked was whether I had any medication. Like many of you, I thought the Cuban health service was world-class. But I could see it with my own eyes - it is diabolical. I eventually gave half my paracetamols to the family, and half to E and Z. E’s contact smuggled a whole box of Cohiba cigars for me, so in return, I bought her juices, cooking oil, apples and eggs at a convenience store for foreigners - items which we wouldn’t think twice about buying on any day of the year, yet, they fret and worry about how to budget for them on a daily basis. I don’t know how all these sit with you, but hopelessness is the only way I can describe it. And I’m sorry if you disagree on what I said about Castro, and for sure, you can blame the US trade embargo for this but don’t forget, the US is very pragmatic/sneaky in getting what it wants. If it wants to do shady business with a shady regime, no one will rebuff them. For sure America would want Cuba to do well but Castro refuses to budge an inch, and as a result, everyone else suffers. Now that he’s retired, hopefully that will come soon.

Hello from Havana. I´m drunk after just one mojito but I don´t care. This is, for me, possibly THE most incredible place on the planet…nowhere else in the world have I considered to be more beautiful, frustrating, angry, pitiful, charming, dodgy, confusing and unique than Havana. As its best, it´s breathtakingly beautiful. But, it also has numerous ugly moments which I won´t go into now. Suffice to say that I will be back, but only after Castro is history. 

Bleungberg is sick of Costa Rica - well, not really but just run out of things to do - so we’re packing up for a three-day jolly in Havana and Panama. Full details of the trip to follow in due course but hopefully it’ll be sound, safe and fun.

Allo Fidel!

Continuous greetings from San Jose, Costa Rica where the food is great (rice and beans are great), weather is good, lesbians continue to make out openly in the parks at night, hard-to-tell-which-sex-they-are transexuals loiter outside my hotel day and night, whilst old white men keep doing the dirty with young chicas out on the streets here. As for dislikes, three things: rats, senile American tourists and cockroaches - in that order. Somehow I guess that the same three items would appear on most people’s lists here; the only difference is that you can legally kill the rats and cockroaches whilst you can never get rid of the tourists! All three are doing my head at the moment: rats just scare me anyway whether they’re small, big, dead or alive; Americans hog everything and everywhere and I’d happily push them all into the craters of the volcanoes here; and cockroaches, well, they are just sneaky little shits that slime their way around.

In terms of irritation, nothing beats those massive groups of old American men and women who can appear out of nowhere, congregate in large groups, blocking corridors, lifts and hogging all the food at the buffet. They put ketchup on everything, they’re brash, noisy, ignorant, ask banal questions, inconsiderate, and I I just loathe them. I went on this tour to an active volcano yesterday - seven hours on a bus and just twenty sodding minutes at the volcano - in the freezing fog and in near darkness! (Apparently it’s better to see molten lava from afar and since it’s orange, it was better viewed in near darkness. Whatever! It was like trying to watch the eclipse during a hurricane.). And why just twenty minutes? Because American tourists like to spend three valuable hours at this bloody hot spring close to the volcano! Why anyone should even want to jump into a hot spring when the temperature is 30 degrees is beyond me. Honestly, please make involuntary euthanasia legal now!

Thank goodness then I’m not alone in voicing my dislike for the Americans at the moment. Tonight, I joined a demo against the free-trade pact between Costa Rica and the US outside the parliament here which will put thousands of Costa Ricans out of their jobs by corporate pharmaceutical firms. (By the way, the Costa Rican national anthem sounds pretty nice) Admittedly, I had no idea what they were protesting about at the start but once you see the word ‘America’ - it must be something worthwhile! In addition,  also thought there’s probably nothing better to spite America then to visit Cuba, so I’m going there this weekend, as well as Panama City. Sorting out the accommodation at Havana was tough because the Americans blocked all the travel sites from listing hotels there. But I’ve overcome that and as I’ll also be going to Iran this April, I guess this is my own little war against the White House. By the way, don’t mention any of the above to the US or they won’t let me into New York next week. I already know they’ll haul me over at immigration and torture me once they see the Iranian stamp in my passport after April this year(!)