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Published: October 6th 2008
After Baracoa we went back to Santiago for a night. Colin wanted to visit a place called El Cobre, so we found ourselves another ¨illegal¨ taxi and headed off. This time round our car was a battered 1957 Dodge Plymouth. We took the back roads out for one or more of the following reasons: a) to avoid police checkpoints (remember he isnt meant to pick up tourists), b) to show us how bad the roads can be and how much they damage his car (read ask for more money), and c) to take longer to try and justify a higher price.
El Cobre...I´m not sure what I was expecting but I was disappointed. For some reason we thought that this church had a copper dome, but I guess we had mis-read something somewhere. The cobre, copper, reference is all to do with the next door copper mine. The church is meant to be the most spiritual place in Cuba, and houses the Virgen de la Caridad, the patron saint of Cuba. The actual virgen is kind of small and lives in a glass box surrounded by floral offerings. Downstairs is the ¨room of miracles¨ with more interesting offerings. Thousands of
them giving thanks to the Virgen for favours / miracles, there were photos, medals, certificates, thousands and thousands of small metal cut out body parts...and we think we found the small golden guerrilla fighter given by Fidel and Raul Castros mother, Lina Ruz, to protect her sons while they were fighting. The copper mine out the back, cutting into the hills, was active from pre-Colombian times right up to 2000. It was the once the oldest European operated mine in the western hemisphere.
While in Santiago we also visited the Cemetario Santa Ilfigenia. Created in 1868 to accomodate victims of the war of independence and a simultaneous smallpox outbreak, it is a smaller version of Havanas city of the dead. It is no less blinding, a sea of white marble. The graves of those who died during the fighting against Batista are marked with two flags, a Cuban flag and a M-26-7 flag. The mausoleum of Jose Pais was impressive, as was the changing of the guard.
From Santiago we took a night bus to Santa Clara. Here we stayed one night, almost, and visited the Che memorial. This is a museum, mausoleum and monument to Ernesto ´Che´
Guevara. Outside is a massive statue and memorial, underneath is the museum and mausoleum where his remains were interred after being recovered and returned from Bolivia. We also went to a place called Monumento a la toma del tren blindado, a small boxcar monument where Che and 18 guerrillas had captured a 22 car armoured train from 408 heavily armed Batista troops.
We werent sure if and when we would be able to leave Santa Clara. We went to get tickets to Havana first thing in the morning, after finding a casa and having some breakfast. There are only two buses a day from Santa Clara to Havana, both starting in Santiago. The Viazul office in SC only has two seats to sell on these buses. And both seats on both buses were gone. The lady tried calling the Santiago office to get us seats, but they wouldnt or couldnt sell them to us. Its a strange and frustrating system of selling seats. Our bus from Santiago the night before had empty seats on. So the only thing to do was to go on the waiting list, turn up just before the bus is due in and hope someone
didnt turn up or is getting of in SC. Problem is, one bus arrives at 3.20am, the other at 8.20am. So if we decided not to try the early bus, and there is no seats on the later one, we are stuck for another day. Or wait for the Trinidad bus and see if there are any seats available on that one. We went for the early wake up call, and managed to get a couple of seats, close but not together. Lucky we did go for that bus as when we got to Havana we found that there was now only one bus heading for Vinales instead of the two on the timetable. If we had taken the later bus from Santa Clara, we would have missed the bus to Vinales.
When we arrived in Vinales we were besieged by casa owners vying for our custom. Things are pretty bad there, only four tourists turned up that day. We have a nice enough casa, the top floor of a three floor apartment block, but with good views over the mogotes, the limestone hills that we have come to see.
The first afternoon we decided to take a
walking tour, too much time sitting on buses and not enough exercize, and this tour gave us plenty of exercise. And scratched legs. The guide spoke really good English, with a bizarre mix of upper class English and American accents depending on the word, and was very knowledgeable. We basically walked in the valley behind town, round a mogote, through a cave and back to town.
The guide talked about the hurricanes, Gustav with winds of over 400km/h and Ike with torrential rain. We saw flimsy houses without their flimsy roofs, flimsy houses lying down, tobacco drying barns spread across the land, trees down or broken in two, crops ruined. The fields were full of flattened sugar cane, corn and fruit trees. From a distance it was hard to tell if the sides of the hills were naturally bare due to soil type, or whether they had been blown clean. From up closer, it was the latter. He also told us all sorts of stories and facts about the area, how it used to be like, what life is like there and about his family. Due to flooding we ended up walking through the cave twice as the path
down the far side now ends up in a new lake.
We had dinner in the casa that evening, but it just showed how quickly the food supplies are running out here. Compared to 2 1/2 weeks ago there is so much less available. Although the meal filled us up, it was all starch and carbohydrate (rice, yuca, malanga, spaghetti soup), some beans, and a tiny bit of papaya and pineapple. Not even any cabbage! All we seemed to eat for the first week or so was cabbage, we got a bit fed up of it being the only vegetable, and now we´d give (almost) anything for some!
The following day we headed back around the mogotes. Colin decided he wanted a full day horseback tour, and he regretted it by the end of the day. It was a great tour, and the horses were pretty good, but for people who dont ride very often, five or so hours in the saddle is a lot! One horse was called Dorado, the other Cruzeiro, who quickly became known as cruiser for the speed he prefered to walk at.
Between all the plodding round the countryside, we visited a
tobacco farm (partially flattened), they are lucky in that they sold and transported last years tobacco crop before the storm, and have yet to plant this years, got to see cigars being hand rolled, a cave near the tobacco farm, a viewpoint overlooking the valley, a tacky painted mural (I´ll try and post a pic of this, easier than describing!), and another cave where we swam, deep underground in the pitch dark. Luckily there was a guide to take us to this freshwater pool as we would never have dared walk that far into the cave system. It was too dark to see how big the pool was, even in torchlight. It was an impressive cave system, and the water was very refreshing (read cold!). By the time we got to swim, we had cruised many dusty trails, developed saddle sores and scratched our legs again squeezing past fallen trees. Even with the hurricane damage, the scenery here is fantastic. The mogotes are the most amazing shapes, craggy, sharp edges but curved at the same time.
Not content with the mogotes and caves from the first two trips, our last morning saw us off to another cave system. This
That lovely mural
Sorry if its a bit fuzzy, I was sitting on a horse at the time I took it!one was too touristified for us really, a shame as the caves were great, as spectacular as the rest. We walked about 200m or so into the mogote then got taken by boat along another 200m of water filled passageways. However, this is where is was spoiled. The boat was powered by a diesel outboard, noisy and smelly in the cave. The bits you see from the boat were impressive, jagged cliffs, stalagtites and stalamites, weird and wonderful formations, but backed by this putt putt putt and exhaust smell. Oh well, thats the way the government dicate people will be shown around. We asked why they want to destroy their caves like this, apparently they used to use boats with oars or poles, but they arent allowed to anymore. And we werent the first (or probably the last) to ¨complain¨.
We had one last day in Havana, and met up with Helen, Alfredo and their family again. We were lucky and they let us stay at their place, HC and CS are not meant to be allowed in Cuba, but for one night it was ok. We pretty much picked up where we left off last time, only this
Karen cooling off deep underground
You can see the swirling smoke from the kero lanterns they use to light the way in these caves. Its not steam from the water! time we walked about where we´d been rather than where we were going. And about the prospects for the coming months. Little food, crops destroyed, chickens and cattle gone.
And that was Cuba. Fascinating. Plenty to see and do. Friendly people. Safe. Expensive. Contradictory. Frustrating. Very resiliant.
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