Baracoa, Guardalavaca and Havana pt 2

Our collectivo ride from Santiago de Cuba to Baracoa was uncomfortable but fairly uneventful, apart from meeting a Russian guy who was doing the journey as a day trip and was returning in the afternoon (the trip took 5 hours one way). We arrived at the Casa that had been arranged for us, and went to look around. Baracoa had for a long time been isolated from the rest of Cuba, only being reachable by sea until a road was built to it in 1964. The town was small and within an hour we had pretty much done a lap of it. There was a peninsula with a fort and a wrecked ship, and a kind of high street with lots of tourist restaurants.

Photo stop before Baracoa

Slightly weathered boat

Some kind of angry sea woman at the end

While Jonno had been developing his caveman look for a few weeks, I had been prompting him to maybe look for somewhere to get his hair and beard cut. As we walked down the high street, out jumped a barber from his shop, clearly noticing the same thing. He started sweet talking Jonno to persuade him to come and use his business, and of course I was already sold on it. Realising there was no escape, Jonno gave in and negotiated the price to $5 for a haircut and beard trim. From where I was sitting, it all looked okay, but from Jonno's reports it was the roughest experience he had ever had, with an extremely blunt razor and being yanked about. On closer inspection it was definitely not a great haircut, it was extremely uneven and Jonno had to prompt him to try and even it out a bit. Also Jonno noticed the sign for the local prices, 5 local pesos for a haircut, a 25th of the price we paid. He clearly knew that he could make a lot more from an unsuspecting tourist.
After doing another lap of the town and stopping a while at the seafront, we concluded it probably was a town you could do as a day trip. Oh well.

Main street of Baracoa- must have walked up and down it 20 times

Battle of the pups- street pup VS roof pup

'Cuba is ours'

For dinner we had been given a leaflet for a vegetarian restaurant, which sounded like a nice change from my mostly chicken and rice based dishes. It wasn't easy to find and was at the opposite end of town, but eventually we found the tiny sign in an alleyway that lead to the 'restaurant'. We were greeted by an extremely over enthusiastic man, who squealed and cackled at us in a serial killer kind of way, and showed to the tables, one in the kitchen and some large logs in the garden. The food was a selection of dishes laid out in the kitchen, and although it was difficult at first to work out what it actually was, it was actually pretty good and had more flavour than most other meals we had in Cuba.
As we were eating, the heavens had opened again and it didn't look like it was stopping anytime soon. We had no choice but to make a run for it, and even with our raincoats we were still getting drenched.
Thankfully a guy in a bicycle taxi took pity on us and took us the last half of the journey and was really reluctant to take any money from us.
We arrived back in the casa to the husband of the house having an extremely intense game of dominos with his friends. This was no game for kids, and involved slamming the domino down as hard as possible and insulting the other players.

EMBED THE DOMINO IN THE TABLE 

We had one more day in Baracoa, and felt we had done enough laps of the town. The area was surrounded by mountains and forests, so we decided to try one of the walking trails, which first took us through some neighbouring villages. The further we went out of town the more basic it became, with dirt roads, huts and chickens wandering around. At the end of the last village, before the forest, we were stopped by a guy with a machete who started asking us questions about where we were going. When we told him, he said the paths were not in a good condition because of the rain, and although we couldn't work out if this was the truth or not, it then started to rain so we agreed to sit with him under a nearby tree. He was then joined by some friends who brought rum (there doesn't seem to be an unacceptable drinking time here, people start with beer at 8am).

Town...

...To countryside

As far as we got into our walk

Taking the essentials across the river. Laundry,pup...

When the rain calmed down we decided against going any further in case the weather turned again, so started to head back towards town, although now the guy decided he was going to take us on a tour of the village first. He took us firstly to a house where a man was making chocolate and the local sweets made from dried fruits, then to his own house to meet his aunt and gave us coffee, then to another woman's house who sold some kind of herbal drink. As we were sitting on the woman's porch watching baby chicks using their mother as a slide, and wondering how much money this guy was going to ask us for, a policeman walked past and started questioning the guy and woman about why they had foreigners in their house. We were not sure what was and wasn't allowed so we decided to play ignorant and keep quiet, and the guy said something that seemed to be acceptable, as the policeman then left. Using this as a good excuse to leave, the guy told us he would walk us to the outskirts of the village, and didn't actually ask us for any money, which left us feeling more shocked as this was not our usual experience.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU COPYING ME

Our next stop was guardalavaca, a town which we heard had stunning beaches, and there didn't seem like there was a bus directly there. The woman at the casa  said she could arrange a collectivo which would go directly there, with no changes, which would take 5 hours. We agreed to leave the next morning.

As we had started breakfast there was a knock on the door, the transport had come early. We are as fast as we could, and found a truck waiting for us, similar to the ones that carry pigs to the slaughterhouse, lined with metal benches. We got in, unsure whether this was going to be our punishment for the next 5 hours. We drove around town, picking 10 more people up, until one of the drivers announced that because of the heavy rain we could not take the road and would have to take a boat over the river instead. Okay, sure, this was definitely not going to be a one vehicle affair then. We were taken to the river, where 2 row boats were waiting for us. Our bags were precariously balanced and we squashed in for the ride. We got to the other side, expecting to have a jeep waiting for us, but no, instead we were greeted by a number of horse and carts in which we were piled into, and were lurched through the muddy trails of a forest. By this time we reached a road, we were only about 5km away from where we started and an hour and a half into the journey. The 5 hour journey was definitely not happening. But at least we were now in a jeep and making some progress. After a quick stop for all the staff to grab a 9am beer, we continued for another hour and a half, until a petrol station, where we were moved to another jeep. This took us for another couple of hours to the nearest city, where we were handed back some of our money and told that we would be dropped off at another collectivo stop and we could use the returned money to get another car. We had just enough time for Jonno to run around in a frantic search for something vaguely edible for lunch, which was almost impossible to find and the only option was a sort of deep fried crumpet, before taking our 5th vehicle of the trip the last leg of the journey to Guardalavaca, totaling the journey time to 8 hours.
Whilst we were waiting for this last vehicle, one woman asked us where we were staying and we showed her the address arranged by the previous Casa, to which she exclaimed 'that's my neighbour!'. Turns out, the place was so small it was pretty much inevitable that we would bump into her neighbour- the residential area consisted of about 5 blocks of flats.

Stage 1- extremely uncomfortable truck

Stage 2- row boat

Stage 3- horse and cart

Oncoming traffic

Stage 4 and 5- jeeps

We were greeted by our host, Dayse, who sympathetically listened to our 'all inclusive' journey story and gave us coffee, telling us we could relax on the balcony in the rocking chairs. Not long after, an English man burst in, asking if he could use the WiFi. WiFi? In a house in Cuba? Wasn't that the same as asking if there was WiFi in the Amazon?  To our amazement and utter shock, Dayse actually did have WiFi in the flat, albeit extremely slow and only limited to 30 hours a month so it was mostly switched off. But when it was on it could be used by numerous devices so we had the luxury of tapping into the WiFi a couple of times a day.
This English man claimed he needed to check his emails as he was in the middle of an insurance claim as his boat had been damaged in the hurricane in Puerto Rico, although really he just wanted to talk. A lot. In fact, we were kept for hours waiting for a pause in his narrative before we could escape to get some food. In this time, we learned that as a retired man he spends some of his time on his boat but some of his time in Cuba, where he had managed to find a Cuban lady 30-40 years his junior, and intentionally or unintentionally conceived a child who was now 4 years old. He married the lady, but she wouldn't leave Cuba and had been denied a visitor visa into the UK even if she wanted to, so it left him making trips into Cuba every so often to visit his wife and child. His wife was also staying in the Casa, but they had left their child with her family, which gave us the impression that while he liked seeing her,  he wasn't completely keen on being the hands on father of a toddler in his 60s or 70s.
After managing to make an escape to find some dinner, we discovered there was one main local place to eat, and for around $1 for a chicken and rice meal and 0.25 cents for an omelette with bread, it became our regular go to place for our stay in Guardalavaca.

 Pretty much the whole town of Guardalavaca here

Guardalavaca, or 'Save the cow' is mainly visited by tourists for the all inclusive resorts, and there is not much to do except visit the beach. Which is very pretty. After managing to escape after listening to another hour of monologue (Dayse saved us by ushering us out the door, talking to us in very fast Spanish so he couldn't understand) we took a walk to the beach, and although it was fairly overcast, found a spot under a tree to chill, or chill as much as possible despite at least 5 local people around us playing their music on speakers as loudly as possible.
It wasn't a bad way to spend a day, so we decided to stay another night and repeat this the next day, learning our lesson and going further down the beach to get a bit more peace.

Not sure who is watching the cow but top marks for the beach

This boy just loves the sand

Two tough days of beaching

We had now ticked off all our places we wanted to visit in Cuba, but were still 800km from Havana which we needed to get to for our flight to Mexico. We decided to try and get it done in one painful night bus leaving from the nearby city of Holguin, so took a taxi for an hour to the main bus station to get our tickets, hoping we could store our bags there too and kill a day in Holguin. As we got to the bus station, a guy outside asked us if we wanted a collectivo to Havana, it would take 9 hours and it would cost less than the bus and leave at 1pm. It was still long, but sounded better than a night bus so we agreed. We expected to be waiting a lot later than 1pm for more people to want a collectivo for such a long journey, but at about 1.15 we were told it was ready to go.
It was an actual car which was also surprising, although sitting in the middle seat of a small car wasn't the most enjoyable experience, especially when the journey totaled 11 hours in the end. Luckily our arranged Casa was awake to expect us at midnight, and the sleep in an actual bed was far better than a bus.

'Fatherland or death'. Friendly.

We had 2 full days in Havana before our flight, which we used wandering around the old town again, discovering the less touristy more run down areas, finding a China town which was only a sign and no other hint of anything Chinese, and dreaming of eating something other than bread or flavourless pizza. We also took a trip to a place called 'Fusterlandia', about 15km out of town, which was a bizarre colourful tiled building created by an artist with lots of vibrant sculptures. Unfortunately, on the way back we had to change buses and while waiting for our second bus we were discovered by our stalking, taking advantage of the tourists to pay for an expensive lunching friend Daniel. He didn't directly ask us why we didn't get in contact with him to stay with him again in Havana and luckily he did say he had other people staying at his flat, but he made us reassure him that when we come back to Cuba or any of our friends do we will be sure to stay with him. Of course, of course, we want to supply you with endless free meals...

Does it have a big old building and an old car? Its probably Havana

The entirety of Chinatown. 

I'm guessing this is state approved? 

Sheila's wheels posse

WHY ARE YOU SO SMALL?

We initially thought that our only option to get to the airport was by taxi which would cost $25, then we found a place marked on the map as a bus to the airport, which had to be cheaper than the taxi. We  weren't expecting it to be so cheap- 1 local peso ($0.04) each. More crowded and sweaty, but it meant we had money left to change into Mexican pesos. Result!

Fusterlandia- When you accidentally order 20 tonnes of tiles on ebay and have a lot of time to kill

Cuba, you have been both interesting and frustrating. You have given us a taste of what a society developed without capitalism is like, and we are not ashamed to say we would like some back. Bring on 20 different brands of everything!

Half of a half of a half of a half of our heart is in Havana, but we were happy to leave it there

Trinidad and Santiago De Cuba

We arrived in Trinidad later than we expected, at about 8pm, slightly concerned that we didn’t have a place to stay arranged but it looked like there were lots of Casas in the area, so our plan was to knock on some doors and hope they had vacancies. As soon as we got off the bus, we realised that there was definitely going to be no problem- About 10 ladies were gathered at the exit, shouting and waving pictures of their Casa at us in the hope we would go with them. As convenient as this was, we now didn’t know which one to choose, which caused the ladies to become more frantic in their shouts, they had surrounded us and were getting louder and louder to the point we couldn’t distinguish one from the other. At this point I had enough, broke my way through the mob and started walking away from them, I was done with being hassled. But no, this was not allowed, the mob followed us down the road still shouting in our faces. In the end we gave up and picked one at random, which thankfully meant the others dispersed. We were lead to the Casa, where the lady running it had to call her friend to help as she could not read and write to fill in the form with our details.

You work it, clown

...if you are lucky

Trinidad was a lot smaller than we expected, but was very pretty, with colourful colonial buildings and cobbled streets, great for the sounds of the horse and carts passing through, not so wonderful wearing flip flops when its pouring with rain. Unfortunately, the majority of the first day was either overcast or heavy downpours, so after walking around exploring the town, we retreated to a cocktail bar to take advantage of their happy hour.

The 'WiFi zone' in town

...Of course making pup friends along the way

Well, if we must

The following day the weather had cleared up so we took a taxi to the beach about 15km away, Playa Ancon. Although busier than we expected, it was a beautiful place and easy to spend a few hours dozing and enjoying the amazingly clear water.

Taxi to the beach

After some crazy rain

Our next destination was Santiago De Cuba, nearly 500 km away. The bus schedule said it would take 11 hours, and unfortunately there was no night bus option so we would need the full day to travel there. The buses in Cuba are old, and whilst they are not the worst buses we have taken on our trip, it was not a comfortable way to spend a whole day. This also wasn’t helped by the fact Jonno started to have a migraine a few hours into the journey. There was only one stop for food at 11am, and the bus was also slowed down by the rain which at times was so heavy it was impossible to see the road. By the time we reached Santiago De Cuba, it had taken us 13 and a half hours and we were exhausted and hungry, and thankfully instead of the harassment we received in Trinidad, there was one lady offering a Casa which we happily took. The lady did not live in the Casa herself, it was run by a retired man who wanted to hug us a lot, and cooked us some food before we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. It also turned out he was extremely patriotic, he told us how strong the Cuban people were, how they would never let America take over and how great all the systems in Cuba were.

'Champion', who always wanted to know what was happening

The faces of the Fatherland

The only option without access to tinder

A lot more rustic than Trinidad

Our first day in Santiago was spent walking around the streets, it’s the second biggest city in Cuba after Havana but a lot more run down. However, there was a lot to see walking down the streets, there is more of an Afro-Carribean population here and while women sit outside their front doors in a rocking chair, the old men hang out in the plazas and play intense games of chess and dominoes. After finding an amazingly cheap cafe ($0.25 for 2 cappuchinos!) we walked to the Moncada Barracks which is now part museum and part school. Although all of the museum was in Spanish, we managed to work out parts of it, with some extra research afterwards. This museum was the site of the first revolutionary attempt made by Fidel Castro on the 26^th July 1953, which was unsuccessful but assisted in gaining more support from the people of Cuba. There were a few more museums we passed but they were all in Spanish which we concluded meant we wouldn’t get that much out of.

There was a mask and costume museum which when we passed, we were told had a dance performance at 4pm which we returned for. Initially there were only 2 other tourists there which felt a bit intimidating, although a few more people arrived later. The performance was good, with some very intense dancing and inevitably we were dragged up to dance too, although at the end after we had given them a tip, they were still trying to pressure us to buy a CD. We walked towards the Malecon, the coastline, but got hassled a lot on the way so didn’t spend long there.

Serious chess game in action

Including lots of macho talk

Pretend capitalist food

Some intense dancing

We were planning on leaving the next day, but the man at the Casa told us the next day there would be big celebrations for the 1^st May and that we should stay and experience it. There was a large gathering at one of the plazas, although by the time we arrived it had dispersed. There was, however, a lot of street parties going on, with music, food stalls and people drinking neat rum from the bottle. We walked around for a while but decided we were not in a day drinking frame of mind so head back towards the centre of the city. We were recommended to visit the nearby cemetery, the burial site of Jose Marti, the first Cuban revolutionary, and also more recently, Fidel Castro. This was a 1km walk from town, but we still had bicycle taxis hassling us along the way to take us, one even cycling all the way there next to us to try and pounce on us on the way out. Fidel Castro’s grave was extremely modest compared to Jose Marti, although this may be temporary place while something more fancy is being constructed.

No sign of a party yet

Found them

Nice boulder for Fidel

..Not so modest for Jose Marti

Jose Marti watching over Jose Marti

A pretty cemetery as cemeteries go

Walking back towards the city

The other place we were recommended was the Castle El Morro, a taxi ride away, which was built to help Santiago defend itself from pirates, although apparently by the time it was finished there were not many pirates left so it was pretty redundant. It was a pretty building though, even though the only attacks it now received were from seagulls dropping crabs in an attempt to break them and get to the meat, so the place looked like a scene from a crab horror movie.

Built to watch out for the real Pirates of the Caribbean

HE SAW TOO MUCH

On our way back from dinner that evening, we were approached by a guy with some very sorry looking dreadlocks, who asked us to talk to him as he wanted to make friends with tourists. He started off by telling us that he was happy in his life, but he didn't like the police and when they detained him and wanted bribe money he said 'FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU' (with rapid middle finger gestures). After various other police hating stories he then asked us if we would buy him some balloons. Umm no. He then stopped talking and just glared at us, so we decided to make our quick exit before we were asked for any other party items.

We had a look at the bus timetable and the buses to our next destination- Baracoa- left at either 7am or the even earlier 2.30am, which didn’t really appeal to us, so we chose to take a collectivo at a more reasonable 8am the following morning.