Blogs from Cuba, Central America Caribbean - page 5

Early start as the Collectivo was picking us up at 8am to take us to our next place Plays Llarga for a bit of sea and sand. We shared with two young girls from Switzerland who both had huge cases each and we were amazed that the driver actually got our two and theirs in the boot....good job ours were not as big. This is the longest journey of our trip about 4 ½ hrs in total and we had to swap taxis on the outskirts of Havana but we arrived in good time taken to the door of our Casa and had an afternoon on the beach!. Playa Larga sits at the top most point of the Bay of Pigs famed for the 1961 invasion by the CIA in trying to topple Castro it also ... read more

Cuba. 2019. Summary Cuba, an island of contradictions. Havana is a busy city where there are obviously people making a reasonable living and some taxi drivers etc. wearing heavy gold and using smart phones and yet you see beggars on the street and older people with lowly jobs looking impoverished. I think most people are quite industrious and willing to make money wherever they can but there appears to be working age people stood about, or queuing up for meat or something. These paradoxes also apply to the countryside but with the emphasis of more on the poorer end. Much farm work is done by horse and pony and old Russian tractors. A few farms had larger and more modern tractors but I suspect these were government owned and run by cooperatives. There are large area ... read more

Day 13. Havana return Good meal last night with red wine and gentle music in background with good keyboard player. Maybe best meal yet and maybe best sleep. Breakfast of fruit, followed by bacon,ham, tomato and scrambled egg. Out into a hot day of 30 degrees again and little cloud. Some climbing past some decent sized dairy farms with Jersey type cows, which may be a cooperative of some sort since they had the odd new tractor about of Chinese origin. Of great interest was the multitude of pony and traps on the roads today with heir best harness and bells jingling. We must have been 100 or so throughout the morning with all the family on board, which we believe were going to a regular gathering of such families and horses. The climb was on ... read more

Day 12 Matanzas. 1 February 2019 36 miles of flat roads today. But what a night. Awoke at 4am with severe stomach cramps which continued on and off until 7am. Here we go again. John is the same. I have never been almost all over the world and never experienced the quantity of people falling ill like this. Three more days and back to our own food and water should settle it. The riding was heading north west to Matanzas through arable country with some newish big tractors and machinery mixed in with the old. The crops were vegetables, sugar cane, grain and acres of fruit trees. Lunch was at an Eco Farm, which was the same standard of loads of vegetables, rice, beans, salad and a variety of meats. Great but much too much food ... read more

Day 9 Cuba 2019. 30 miles. What another glorious day. Our luck is changing. The last two days had 50% cloud and warm breeze. Today it started off with a clear sky and 28 degrees again. We cycled to the location of an old sugar cane processing plant and went up the tall tower built by the plantation owner in 1815 which gave great views of the surrounding countryside. Because it is visited by many tourists the road up to it was full of people selling their wares. Bananas, reversible black and white dolls and white cotton tableware forever, flapping furiously in the wind. As usual we were pestered to buy at every step. I thought we were in Marrakesh. This area was the second largest sugar cane production area in Cuba and several large houses ... read more