Cuba - Santa Clara and Villa San Jose del Lago

Our next stage was to move north to the centre of the island, Santa Clara, and then to the northern coast near Yaguajay before heading back to Havana for our last two nights and flying directly home. The bus took just over three hours as it couldn't go on the narrow twisty roads directly north over the mountains but had to retrace part of the route to Cienfuegos on the better roads. I am not sure I would like to drive through or into Cuban cities. The roads seemed reasonable but with horses, cycles and rickshaws everywhere, not to mention the occasional pothole and lack of road signs, it would have been stressful. Walking in the streets at night presented different problems as most cyclist did not have lights!

View over Parque Vidal. Our casa overlooked the park at the southern corner.

Santa Clara is also the resting place of some of the remains of the Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara. According to the information, he was executed in Bolivia in 1967 in front of CIA officers and his remains eventually sent to Cuba in 1997. The mausoleum houses the remains of 17 guerrillas who died in the Bolivian campaign. We got a taxi to the Plaza de la Revolucion to visit the mausoleum and attached museum of Che's life. It was interesting to see the old photos concerning his life and writing but I had the feeling he would not have condoned the lavish expense of the whole complex whilst poverty was still prevalent.

The elevated statue of Che Guevara who is still remembered everywhere in Cuba for his freedom fighting and part in the revolution in 1958. The words mean "Always to victory".

We also went to the monument of "la Toma del Tren" where in December 1958 a group of rebels derailed an armored train; Che Guavara was instrumental in planning and implementing the plan that led to the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship and the start of a socialist revolution that is unique in the world and continues to this day.

We also visited other museums and the "Teatro la Caridad," dating from 1885 in the colonial period. We had a guide who spoke slowly telling us about the detailed restoration of the theatre and its splendid ceiling fresco. There was also a modern boulevard catering for tourists and I guess, the more affluent Cubans. Also in the back streets we had two excellent dinners at the Florida Center, excellent value with Spanish wine as well.

The only way we could find of getting to our next destination was by taxi as the bus mentioned by "Lonely Planet" didn't run, at least as far as we could find out. This was a pleasant journey but unfortunately the weather changed with a sharp drop in temperature and rain that lasted a few days. This coincided with me catching a cold and not feeling brilliant for a couple of days. This worked out pretty well as we were able to rest in the Cuban resort, Villa San Jose del Lago, having arranged with our driver to return at the beginning of the next week, at least with our limited Spanish and his lack of English, that is what we hoped to have arranged! The "Lonely Planet" advises that this villa makes a good base for seeing the area but this is no longer the case. We had to work hard to arrange an excursion to the Jobo Rosado Reserve as the reception at the villa couldn't understand why we wanted any excursion from the picturesque resort. We also found out later that the Ecotur office in Yaguajay was closed; we had been told this at the villa but visited it anyway to confirm!

The lake at the resort with its resident flamingos. The resort is known for its thermal pools but we weren't impressed and only went once. They needed cleaning and modernising.

The restaurant wasn't meant for foreign tourists. It was busy as there was a course on for a large Cuban group and we often found ourselves the only foreigners in there, not a bad thing but it did take a few trial and errors to figure out how the system worked. The visit to the reserve and Rancho Querete was great as we had a very knowledgeable guide to describe the flora and we saw many birds including the national bird, the Tocororo, which is endemic to Cuba (sorry, although we saw it several times I wasn't quick enough to get a photo!). We also saw Jutia (a small mammal resembling a cross between a marmot and squirrel) as the research centre was involved in a breeding programme to repopulate the local forest. I got the impression they had been hunted to extinction. The centre is only open until four in the afternoon and it would have been a nice location to stay and do some walking in the hills; apparently Exodus use to do some trekking into the hills in this area.
I have to include this photo taken on a local walk!

Rice drying on the roadside. Someone had confidence in their weather forcasting!

Well our driver did turn up, almost on time, and we were soon back in Santa Clara for the night before getting the bus back to Havana. This took almost four hours without stopping apart from allowing the men out on a dual carriageway to relieve themselves, socialism doesn't quite mean gender equality yet!

I am not sure I should be showing this as it may be helpful to the CIA if they are still considering overthrowing the Cuban Government. It is the guarded resting place for "Granma" the yacht that brought Fidel Castro and 81 rebels to Cuba in 1956 in their failed attempt to defeat the Batista army.

We spent a pleasant couple of days exploring parts of Havana we hadn't been able to get to on our first visit. These included the "Museo de la Revolucion", "Pavillon Granma", "Parque de Fraternidad, "Capitolio Nacional" and the bay front around the Malecon.

National Capital Building, the seat of the Cuban Government until 1959 and now occupied by the Cuban Academy of Sciences.

This made for a great end to the holiday and showed a slightly different side to Havana that we hadn't seen on the central part of the old city. 

I guess before signing off I should mention more about the cars that Cuba is famous for. We found a complete range of cars from the old american gas guzzlers of the 1950's to modern 2014 built cars and four wheeled drive vehicles with a good selection of old Russian cars as well including the Lada that was once seen in the UK but rarely now days. One thing that hit us about Havana was the amount of building renovation work that was in progress; I suspect things will change in the future as Cuba takes on more of the modern world, but hopefully it will retain the old world charm and sustainability that make it an example for us foreigners! We always found the Cubans themselves to be polite, generally happy and caring and never felt unsafe on the city streets, day or night, even two old codgers!

Hasta Luego

Cuba - Cienfuegos and Trinidad

How time passes; we were soon on our way to Cienfuegos leaving our casa early to catch the bus. This left from the main square next to the church which also seemed to be the meeting place for the school children waiting for their school buses. The journey felt particularly long (it took about seven and half hours in total with two stops and a pick-up in Havana); in retrospect it would have been better to get a taxi in Vinales and gone directly to Cienfuegos (by the way, the Cubans do not pronounce the "s") as the cost is not excessive. Again we were met with by a tricycle taxi who tied our luggage on the back and made off through the grid of streets (it is easy to find your way around the city as the streets are on a geometric grid system, thanks probably to the early French influence in the city). The casa we stayed at was a short ten minute walk to the main square, Parque Jose Marti, and the boulevard leading to the bay with a street market for tourists. 

The central park in Cienfuegos, "Parque Jose Marti" named after the Cuban freedom fighter and poet who lost his life in 1895 fighting for independence from Spain. Can you spot Helen?

We visited various museums, the theatre dating to colonial times (Teatro Tomas Terry), the Botanical Gardens and Punta Gorda for a boat trip into the bay. One of the museums, Museo Historico Naval Nacional, took some finding in a backstreet in the northern part of the city. It was interesting and mainly to do with the revolution but we felt a little self conscious as we were escorted by at least two women opening doors and switching lights on for us. 

Transport Nacional: One of the most popular forms of getting around in the city. These carriages take about six people. Note the poo collection bag!

We took a taxi (arranged through the casa) to the gardens, about a twenty minute drive out of the city (entrance 2.50 CUC and taxi 30 CUC). This really felt very tropical with the massive plants and colourful flowers, not to mention insects! A guide took us around and was a mine of information about the trees and plants. There is a cafe come restaurant at the gardens but little written information about the history of the park or indeed the flora, but I guess this will come with time.

Alan in the Botanical Gardens among the giant bamboo. The gardens were wet and humid after the nights rain and there were lots of biting insects around to keep us moving.

Lots of bryophtes and orchids around. We did spot Cuban Emerald humming birds but they are difficult to photograph; Cuba has three species of humming birds including the smallest Bee Hummingbird. There are no humming birds in the photo !

We organised the boat trip through the tourist information office (Infotur, there are offices throughout Cuba) and walked down to Punta Gorda, a peninsula on the south side of the city. We can't say this was a pleasant walk, although scenic it was very odorous, presumable caused by untreated sewage entering the bay from the city. It was a pity because the boulevard follows the waterline in places. We joined a group of German tourists on the cruise who had arrived by coach. We saw lots of large jelly fish and some Pelicans in the bay but it was interesting to see the locals going about their daily life on the waters edge.

Photo taken on our trip in the bay with the Castillo de Jagua in view (a fort built to protect the entrance to the bay, top left in photo).  Near here the bay opens to the Caribbean Sea.

We left Cienfuegos after lunch the next day for the short bus ride to Trinidad and one of my favourite cases of the trip, Casa Colonial run by Barbara and Nancy situated about five minutes walk from the Plaza Mayor and Plaza Carillo. The food was great and the accommodation very pleasant with two private terraces. Although they spoke little English, they did speak Spanish slowly for us and together with gestures we managed to organise most of our outing through them and their contacts.

The lower terrace of "our" casa in Trinidad. This is where we ate our breakfast and some evening meals

The main things we wanted to do in Trinidad, apart from the usual exploring in the central area, was to spend a day at the beach, try the train along the sugar-cane valley and visit the mountains at Topes de Collantes. The Ancon beach is just a short taxi ride from the centre and easily reached. By three in the afternoon we decided we'd had enough sun and sea for one day so returned to the casa before finding somewhere to eat.

Under the shade at Ancon Beach, south of Trinidad. Our taxi was an old Ford Consul that had a Russian engine and very well restored inside with wooden panels replacing the original.

The train along the Valle de los Ingenios gave us another chance to see the countryside and villages. This stopped at the village of Manaca iznaga where we bought some table linen at the market and had some refreshments. The train then went further along the valley before shunting and returning with a stop for lunch. This proved impossible as the restaurant had been booked by a tour group so we advise other independent travellers to take along a snack and enjoy the break in peace!

Linen market at Manaca iznaga, our brief stop on the train journey.

The trip up into the mountains to the north of Trinidad to Topes de Collantes proved interesting because we managed to get a taxi driver who was hell-bent on cutting all the corners on the way up and racing all the downhills to gain speed for the inclines! We decided to follow the Sendero Caburni to a waterfall in the valley and arranged to meet the taxi driver about four hours later. We set-off with threatening rain down a steep and rocky hillside, contouring at times. Our views were limited because of the dense vegetation and trees but we finally reached an opening that gave us spectacular views of the waterfall. This would not be a good walk in the drier parts of the year! We made surprisingly good progress on our climb back into the sunshine and had time for a beer and malanga frites (malanga is a hairy tuba grown locally) in a restaurant, Villa Caburni, near the start of the walk.

Helen making the final descent to the waterfall. It proved difficult to get a good photo of the falls because of the contrasting light conditions near midday, but it is around the corner to the right, you'll have to take my word for it!

It would be remiss not to include some photos of Trinidad itself, such a quaint city with its cobbled centre powered by tourist but with normal life going on all around. In the market we bought a set of wooden place mats made of different coloured natural woods depicting various fruits, birds and fish; I can't imagine how long the detailed jig-saws had taken to complete. We did the "photo walk" mentioned in the "Lonely Planet" and can recommend this as you see another side to the city. The walk is made easier with the detailed map obtainable from the Infortur office.

View towards the Plaza Major taken from the top of the Museo Historic Municipal.

We did find a private internet cafe, Cafeteria las Begonias, so for the first time on the trip we were able to contact home. We then made a last visit to our favourite plaza, Plaza Carrillo, to see sunset. By now we had become familiar with the maze of the street layout that had confused us to start with!

Cuba - Rural Valle de Vinales

We caught the mid-day bus to Vinales arriving in the evening to be met at the drop-off by the son of the casa owner. The trip was fine with one ten minute stop at a service parador with toilets. It was a short walk to the edge of the village and our accommodation for four days. The Vinales valley is edged by the unmistakable flat topped hills they call "Mogotes" which rise to around 400 m.

A view across the Valle de Vinales to the Mogotes where we walked to see sunrise. This photo was taken from Balcon del Valle near the Hotel los Jazmines which is south-west of Vinales along a steep and winding road.

Opposite our casa we watched the farmers busy working in the fields, mainly using manual methods with the help of oxen and horses. The rural scenes gave me the feeling of stepping back in time to the era of our great grandparents in rural England. They farmed in a more sustainable way compared with modern western agriculture with small mixed farms and without the use of artificial pesticides or fertilisers. The animals provided the labour for the heavy jobs and also the manure to feed the crops and fruit trees.

Typical scene near our casa with oxen ploughing the fields in the morning before the main heat of the day. We saw chickens and hens everywhere and were told they hear where they lay their eggs so hen houses aren't needed; I guess this is truly free range eggs, nice in the tortilla at breakfast.

We did a couple of interesting walks in the valley and hills to get views of the sunset and sunrise. This was entirely on farms tracks and paths through the homesteads and gave us a great impression of rural life and the vegetation in the valley.

This farmstead photo was taken on our sunset walk and is typical of the many buildings we passed on the path through the various fields. Some of these had solar power (110 V) to run refrigerators and lighting. We were told this was financed by the government.

The sunset walk ended at a farmstead for a "sundowner" and demonstration of cigar tobacco rolling.

The mist dispersing on our sunrise walk through the valley. Here, as in most places in Cuba we saw the "Turkey Vultures" (Cathartes aura) soaring overhead, the large numbers suggesting there is plenty of carrion around in the rural areas and probable road kill nearer the cities.

We also had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours walking around the casa owners farm, very much a mixed farm of crops including beans, tobacco, maize, pineapple, yucca, plantain, (the last two making nice chips that are popular in Cuba), sugar cane and lots of fruit trees, e.g. lime, orange, guava, mango and bananas and of course pigs, free range hens and goats used for milking. They had a new tobacco drying house that was made from locally sourced material and looked very impressive.

A new tobacco drying shed set against the background of the Mogote cliffs.

In Vinales we also visited the impressive botanical gardens, El Jardin de Caridad, dating back 100 years, the caves (Cueva del Indio), Mural de la Prehistoria (a cliff hand painted) and outdoor market selling a variety of local crafted wooden ornaments. We never did get the tour bus (Hop On/Off) although we caught glimpses of it from time to time and did try and wave it down. In the end, we got an old blue American "Chevy" taxi to take us around at about the same costs as the bus plus we had some entertainment from the elderly driver who explained the engine wasn't original but a Russian engine and it had great fuel economy (75 km per litre ! although free wheeling down hills helped). Also in Vinales, as in the rest of Cuba that we visited, we were quite taken by their wooden rocking chairs on the verandas of most house; may be a future woodworking project!. We can certainly recommend this area for a visit but we were told it gets very busy later in high season (officially starting about the 15 November) with the daily tour buses from Havana. We noticed that the other tourists seemed to be mainly German and French who had come from beach resorts for a day visit to Vinales and those we met in the casas where mainly younger Germans.

Cuba - La Havana Vieja, the Start of our Months Trip

It is now 17 th December the day that relations between Cuba and the USA thawed a little with the release of the three of the five Cuban prisoners from jail in the USA. We have just returned from a Cuban trip and often saw signs for the campaign "Give me Five Obama". 

We flew from Gatwick directly to the capital Havana to a completely different environment and of course climate with temperatures in the mid twenties to early thirties, so what a shock to the system not to mention, culture. 

We had planned the trip for some time with the aim of seeing as much of the country as possible but taking time to see each area. We started with a few days in Havana before moving to the rural west in the Pinar del Rio province and the village of Vinales set in a valley among the flat topped hills or Mogotes. From there we went  back to Havana and onto Cienfuegos for three days before moving further south to the famous city of Trinidad close to Playa Ancon and the Topes de Collantes and the mountains to the north. It was only a relatively short hop from there to the centre of the island, Santa Clara the city connected with the revolutionary Che Guevara. We then decided to take a few days in a Cuban resort in an isloated region near the north coast at a small place near Mayajigua west of Yaguajay with the forest reserves in the mountains to the south and Parque Nacional Caguanes to the north extending to the coast. After this we returned to Santa Clara overnight before spending our last couple of days back at the start, in Havana.

We mainly stayed in "Casas Particulares" which are similar to the Indian "Homestays". These a privately run houses that are registered by the government to provide accommodation for tourists and generally provide clean rooms with en-suite together with breakfast and options for an evening meal. Although English wasn't often spoken, we got by with our beginners Spanish and found the owners very helpful and often happy to help-out with planning activities during our stay. The food was always good and in abundance but I think they were more accustomed to providing breakfasts for Germans and Dutch as we always had meat and cheese on offer in the mornings but no matter, we had lots of fruit where ever we went. The cost was typically 25 CUC per night for the bed, 5 CUC per person for breakfast (desayuno in Cuban Spanish) and 12 CUC per person for dinner (cena). In the Casas, drinks were about 2.5 CUC for a Mojitos, 2 CUC for Cuba Libre (Rum and Coke) and 1 CUC for a Kola (the Cuban version of Coke). We changed money in the banks (always BFI) and got about 1.52 CUC for a pound sterling (they call libra esterlina) and the same in the Cadaches (Exchange Bureau), although in these you are likely to have to join a long queue. We had no need of the local currency, CUP.

We travelled the longer distance on the Viazul buses and once we got accustomed to the system, we found them fine if not too cold because of the air conditioning! Otherwise we used taxis, mostly old American cars or Russianas as well as Bici-taxis (pedal powered tricycles). We did plan the trip so that the casas were reserved and we only had to phone them the day before to confirm. Likewise we booked the bus routes and paid for them in the UK. However, we still had to go the the bus stations and get a ticket well before the bus departed and also make sure our luggage went on the same bus as us. Each station seems to have its own system with dealing with passengers, but generally it worked fine, you just have to go-with-the-flow. 

Our first casa in the Plaza Vieja (we are in the far corner on the second floor). This photo was taken from the "Camera Obscura" high above the plaza. The buildings here have been extensively renovated. The square also acted as the playground for school children during the day and of course musicians for most of the day and night!

Many of the older Spanish period buildings were photogenic and with the widespread renovation operations now in progress, they will look fantastic in the future. Other areas, some adjacent to the Plaza Vieja, look in need of repair and in some streets it was fun trying to avoid all the potholes and road works whilst watching for the numerous tricycles bombing around you. We spent the days in Havana exploring the main streets such as Obispo, Mercaderes and San Ignacio, doing the suggested walking tour describe in the Lonely Planet, visiting the numerous historical museums, the Casillo de la Real Fuerza overlooking the bay, the Museo del Rum near the harbour and also the tour on the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus which starts from the Parque Central adjacent to the Hotel Inglaterra.

This is in Plaza San Francisco de Asis just north of Plaza Vieja and is labelled "La Conversaction"  highlighting the current need for dialogue in society. It is by the French sculptor Etienne and was donated to the city in 2012 by Vittorio Perrotta. It was being polished when we first saw it, so we returned later to see this real marvel.

I couldn't resist this monument to Sancho Panza, the squire to Don Quixote. At first I thought it was Don Quixote but the "paunch" (Panza is "belly" in Spanish) gave him away. There is also a well known restaurant in Vedado another part of Havana with the same name!

More of Havana on our return at the end of the holiday.