The Miami Herald reports on the Cuban leader's suspiciously long trip to the Middle Kingdom:

The newspaper Granma, official voice of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba, reported Monday that Castro took off from Havana on Sunday for a state visit to China and Vietnam but did not give the exact time of his departure.

China's news media reported that he landed in Beijing on Wednesday, indicating that he spent at least two days en route. U.S. commercial flights from Miami to Beijing, with one stopover, take a little more than 24 hours.

"Where was he?" Havana dissident Martha Beatriz Roque asked in a column. If he did make a stopover somewhere en route, she added, it must have been, like so many other things in Cuba, "a state secret."

One possible, not-so-sinister explanation is that he was golfing in Italy. Castro reportedly makes a low-key visit each year to a resort in Tuscany near the home of his daughter's husband's family. 

Castro is in China to sign a series of deals including a new line of credit and aid for health-care and technology.