Cuba - Camaguey

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Camaguay

Friday 1st April

Camaguay is Cuba’s third largest city and one of the oldest settlements on the island but I suspect that that main reason that the organised tour stops here is to break the long journey as we head to the east coast of the island.

We arrive here late in the afternoon in time to settle into the Hotel Plaza and head out for a meal at a local Paladar, a family home where they have been granted a licence to serve meals to visitors. On this occasion we get served a fairly standard Cuban menu but with the inclusion of goat meat, which I haven’t seen anywhere else in Cuba yet.

The Hotel Plaza has probably seen better days but it seems to be where tour parties are taken as there are several groups staying there. It seems that they are all just using it as an overnight stop to break the journey across the island. Our room is OK, we’re back in the world of hot water, and fortunately we have a room that overlooks the courtyard of the hotel rather than the railway station and we are able to catch up on our sleep after a couple of nights sleeping on the hacienda. The hotel chain have now realised that Cat works for Explore and she finds a bottle of wine {which she shares with the rest of us} and chocolates waiting for her in her room!

Bicitaxis

We spend a couple of hours looking around Camaguay the following morning before we move on. The standard method for taking tourists around seems to be the Bicitaxi, a tricycle which carries the cyclist and two passengers. Perhaps it’s because the streets are quite narrow and flat and because the key places of interest are all some distance apart but there are lots of these taxis in town, with several designated Bicitaxi stands. All the tour groups from the hotel are put into these taxis and pedalled around town for a couple of hours.

We finish our Bicitaxi tour and our short stay in Camaguay with a trip to the farmers’ market which is open on Saturdays and Sundays to spend our Nacionals .I decide that its too early in the day to continue my mission to pay for a beer in Nacionals and decide to search for oranges. I fail – there isn’t too much variety available at the market - but the rest of the group seem to enjoy finding out how far 20MN will go.

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