Cuban escapes: Cubans joint unofficially to the Google maps.

Still on 2009, all about Cuba remains mysterious and difficult to reach. No matter if  we are talking about news or looking for an address of a place to visit in the island.  This is still "the lost city". In order to stop this situation and put finally Cuba in the Map, locals are joining to Cubans abroad to break the isolation in which they live. What makes this project different? People who produce the information posted in this Web live in Havana or another obscure place in the island where Internet is forbidden; because this project is not an official project, this is a citizen project.

The origins of Skapada (a variation of the Spanish word "escapada" which means escape) date back to this simple comment at a forum on the web.

- I am looking for an address in Havana but no way. There is not a decent map of that city in Internet. I wonder how the visitors find their way in Havana!

At that time Havana remained as a place lost in time but also in space. Each visitor to the island marched with their eyes closed, not knowing for sure whether your hotel, hostels or private house was: in the center or outside of the city.

Four years later, technology and maps enables showing any place in the world, no matter if map data are deliberately obscured by the man or unreachable by the technological development of a specific geographic area.

So, Skapada aims to give the people living in the Cuban island and their visitors a place to rediscover themselves, this time on the Internet. The primary interest is not to convince anyone that our sea is bluer or our sand whiter. We wish to show that Cuba is much more than the few meters among the white foam that washes our shores and the hotel, more than a Che Guevara picture or a mojito under palms. Behind this scenario Cuba still remains a rich, suffering, dreaming, laughing and cursing place. Hence, the idea began with the need for a simple map, it escaped from his two-dimensional barriers to became a social responsibility to seek a living place for that area in cyberspace.

It welcomes everyone to shape his own experience in luxury hotels they may have visited, but also with the modest house, with restaurants, with the humble people they have met, with his music, events and celebrations, with their religion, history and transculturation. This is place is all about Cuba and Cuba is more than a Tourist thematic park showing a Tropical communist island.

Source: www.skapada.com