Hace mucho calor!

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Let's begin at the beginning. Cuba is bloody hot in August and this is a problem. I imagine the feeling when stepping off that plane in Holgiun and into the inferno can't be a world away from what a lobster experiences when it's dropped into a pan of boiling water. Speaking of which, it turns out lobster is really tasty, especially when it comes as part of a three course meal costing you about £6.

Cuba is a pretty unusual place. Since Fidel Castro's revolution in the 1950s, the island has been stuck in a time warp. In 2008 the newly inaugurated president Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, made it legal for Cubans to own mobile phones and DVD players and stay in tourist hotels. In 2011 he allowed Cubans to buy and sell their homes and cars and travel abroad, luxuries the Cuban people had not enjoyed for over 50 years. He also decided to lay off half a million government workers and granted business licenses to 178 state-recognised professions. Every other car here is a weathered 1950s American classic car and the majority of the buildings look like they haven't seen a fresh lick of paint for half a century yet the pastel colours still just about hang in there, contributing to the flavour of this culturally rich but economically poor country.



All hotels in Cuba are at least 51% owned by the government and offer foreign travellers a somewhat censored and closed view of the country. As a result of this the best option, which the majority of backpackers opt for, is to stay at casa particulares; the family homestay. Spending several days and nights staying with up to three generations of a Cuban family, enjoying their superb, portion-generous meals and mojitos (at 60p a pop it'd be rude not to), getting inside knowledge on where to go, what to see and do and how to do it like a local, you really can't go wrong. Near enough every casa has a balcony off the bedroom and/or a rooftop terrace with views of the city, mountains or the sea. As the majority of casas charge the same price, the standard of both the rooms and food is high and the hospitality is second to none.



Cubans are a happy, friendly bunch. From the guy wheeling round a cart of mangos and bananas all day to the bicycle taxi drivers, the street musicians and casa hosts to the nutter with a guitar serenading you in a cafe with his rendition of Hotel California, in which he 'sings' the guitar solo rather than playing it on his guitar. This lot are as happy as a fat bird eating cake and why wouldn't they be? They live in the Caribbean and everyone owns a rocking chair. That's two good reasons to be happy and I'm sure they have many more. Everyone here is both polite and respectful, apart from the occasional fella kissing his teeth at passing chicas, making a sound not too dissimilar to that which you may make when trying to call your cat in from the garden because it's time to lock up the house and go to work. Apparently if a man/woman says ‘mango’ when passing you in the street it means they think you're sweet. Or he/she's selling mangos.



So what have we been doing you ask? Sweating, mostly. During our first outing in the city of Santiago de Cuba it took us around five minutes to notice that even the locals were hiding from the relentless midday heat so we quickly returned back to our casa, sealing the balcony doors and windows before spending the afternoon hiding away in an air conditioned bubble. The following day, in Santiago’s Parque Cespedes, a handy display confirmed the temperature was a toasty 42 degrees. This is not cool. Santiago is a pretty intense place to visit as an introduction to Cuba. The grid of low-rise, identical streets do little to provide relief from the heat, fumes and hustlers or give your internal compass something to work with yet the franticness and desperation of this city make every trip out of the comfort of the casa both interesting and unpredictable.



Santiago is a city full of history. It was from there that Fidel Castro launched his nationalist revolution and it is also the home of Don Facundo Bacardi's first rum factory. In a city with so much history it doesn’t take a great amount of time to get all museum’ed out. We concluded that it takes approximately one day but that’s not to say the museums weren’t interesting. There is now a Lucha Clandestina (clandestine struggle) museum housed in the former police station that activists attacked in November 1956 as a distraction to Fidel Castro’s yacht, Granma, arriving from Mexico with his army of 81 men. We enjoyed this museum, mostly because the guide who showed us around was a right character and shared with us a private rendition of his reggae version of Imagine by John Lennon that he was inspired to create after holidaying in Jamaica. We also enjoyed the Santiago Carnival museum, mostly because a lady followed us around the museum to turn the lights on and off in each room we passed through. The Cuartel Moncada was also a sight to behold. A one-time military barracks where the first shots of the Cuban revolution were fired by Castro and his men, now a school that is still bullet-riddled from the day it all kicked off.



The most impressive building we saw in Santiago was the unnecessarily long-named Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca del Morro. ‘Fort by the Sea’ would have done the job nicely. This postcard picture fortress sits above the Caribbean Sea and has the Sierra Maestra mountain range, Cuba’s biggest mountain range, as a backdrop. The fort was designed to protect Santiago from pillaging pirates but is now a pirate museum and home to a very large community of lizards; geckos, bearded dragons and some huuuuge iguanas. While in Santiago we also visited the cemetery, as you do. It’s not your average cemetery though. This vast space on the outskirts of the city is the final resting place for the majority of the famous victims of the War of Independence, Emilio Bacardi and the ‘martyrs’ of the 1953 Moncada Barracks attack. The main 'attraction' is the rather unusual changing of the guard which happens every 30 minutes, day and night, at the imposing hexagonal mausoleum of Jose Marti, the national hero who died on the battle field as he led his men in a charge towards the Spanish lines in 1895. It was pretty bizarre to say the least, but maybe not as bizarre as seeing a 10 year old girl wearing a thong on the beach... but that's a different story altogether.



From Santiago we headed to the north-eastern tip of Cuba to the delightful settlement of Baracoa in the Guantanamo province. Baracoa was Cuba’s first city, built within the tropical wilderness of what is now Cuba’s most bio diverse national park. The city was isolated from the rest of Cuba for over 400 years until a connecting road was built through the mountains in 1964. We stayed at a lovely casa with windows right along three walls of our room and a rooftop terrace with views of the ocean to the east and El Yunque, the flat-topped mountain out to the west. Ours hosts couldn’t speak a word of English and, as a result, our Spanish skills have gone from pretty terrible to pretty bad. English is not very widely spoken in Cuba and although it was at first a struggle to communicate, it’s surprising how fast you can pick up another language when it's a necessity. We spent a day with a local lad called Frediz who took us on some unexpected, four hour flip-flop wearing expedition (we just asked him to walk us to the beach) through the jungle, climbing up some sketchy 30m bamboo ladder into the cave where native Indians slaughtered the Spaniards they captured. Much to my amusement, he insisted I filmed him pretend to slaughter Kate. This moment turned out to be the highlight of the day, while descending into a pitch black cave to swim in a natural watering hole, sharing a torch that was as useful as a mudguard on a tortoise, came in a close second.



Since Kate discovered Primark plimsolls are not fit for a three day hike up an active volcano in Indonesia a couple of years ago, we decided to invest in some hiking boots for this trip and it’s a good job we did as they probably wouldn't have been a sensible footwear option for climbing to the peak of El Yunque. It proved to be quite a mission in the relentless heat, even under the canopy of the forest, but the rewarding views and chance to swim in the crystal clear Rio Toa upon completion made it worth the effort. Along the way our awesome guide, Joanis, showed us cocoa and coffee plants and picked us mango, tangerine, avocado, limes and guava and he had an impressive ability to find all kinds of wildlife and recognise each and every birdsong. We also took a short rest at the farmers hut halfway up the mountain where you can eat all the fruit you like for 1CUC while enjoying the epic view across the jungle and out to sea.



We hooked up with the same guide to explore the Alejandro de Humboldt national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we searched for the world’s smallest frog, hummingbirds and another river to swim in. Not surprisingly, the world’s smallest frog is very hard to find. On this particular day it was impossible to find no matter how long we spent looking under rocks and piles of rotten, decomposing leaves. It seemed the hummingbirds were having a day off too but luckily, that same evening, a hummingbird showed up fluttering around the tree next to our terrace. They certainly are impressive little creatures, albeit a little gay. On the way back from the national park we got to see our first white sand, blue sea beach of the trip, Playa Maguana. Up until this point, the few beaches we had seen were a little disappointing, what with the sand being the wrong colour or a lack of palm trees. Playa Maguana totally delivered, the only let down being the loud reggaeton blasting out further along the beach. Cubans love the reggaeton so much it's painful.



One of the highlights of Baracoa was the cuisine and it's near enough the only place in Cuba with a regional cuisine. In Baracoa they thankfully jazz up the sometimes unambitious Cuban cuisine with local fruits, sugar and spices. The most delicious Baracoan offering is a coconut sauce known as lechita, or coco de leche, which is a mixture of coconut milk, garlic, tomato sauce and spices. Served over fish it’s an absolute winner. Baracoa is also famed for its chocolate production due to the endless amount of cocoa plants in the area and the famous Che Guevara chocolate factory which the man himself opened as he loved the stuff. However, the don of sweet treats in Baracoa is the cucurucho, a mushy mixture of coconut, sugar, honey, papaya, mandarin and nuts that comes wrapped in a cone-shaped palm frond. Too good.



From here we head west across the country, beginning with a 12 hour journey from Santiago to Trinidad. If you've read this far then well done you. The next blog will hopefully be less of a rant and shouldn't be such a mission to get through!

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Comments

[Charlotte]

Enjoyed that read! Sounds fantastic and am especially liking the horse photos, they were for me weren't they?! Look forward to the next instalment, keep safe and carry on enjoying x