Days 15 & 16 Havana and Las Terrazas Cuba

Day 15  Havana Cuba

Cuba Day 2

We woke this morning totally unsure of the time, the alarm clock in our room was 1 hour ahead of the time we thought it was, so when we headed down for breakfast we weren’t sure if we had ample time for a leisurely breakfast, or whether our guide would be waiting for us, luckily it was the former.

Breakfast, now that’s an experience. 🙂  It  seemed we were invisible to the wait staff, but that wasn’t anything personal, they seemed to consider all guests as ghosts! But we managed and now knew what to expect, so all was good. It’s a Cuban thing I think. 🙂

And it continued, our guide was 45 mins late (but he did have a message sent to our room at the time we were meant to meet him in the lobby). Turns out one of his children were sick, so we let it go.

We had a fantastic day out exploring all over Havana. We started with a walking tour through the old city. We got all sorts of information passed onto us about its history, from the time the small Spanish village of Havana was burnt to the ground in 1550, to a series of “Revolutions” against the British, The Spanish, and American assisted Revolution against the Spanish again, a few unsuccessful and successful Coups , and finally the Castro led Revolution of 1959 to oust the Batista Regime. After the US had apparently assisted with the Revolution against the Spanish in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s the US made several demands on Cuba, the most onerous being, to give them Guantanamo Bay in perpetuity , not to make any foreign policy and to allow the US to set in if it had “Bad” government.

We walked through lots of old fascinating streets, all alive with nationals and tourists. We went to San Cristobal Cathedral, a very large old church that was renovated and changed from Baroque to a more modern style. From there we went to a local coffee shop. It was full of life and history. O’Rielly’s Coffee shop was started in the 1850’s and still had all its character, our guide and I had an espresso of local coffee, bitter but very tasty, Deb had tea. Being away from the tourist areas the price was fair at 2.50CUC (The convertible peso that tourists use = CUC = 24 x local peso = about 1 Euro)  We walked through a number of squares, and most of them had their own “Speakers Corner” we topics such as the Best Baseball team of all time, etc were hotly debated. Such life.

We did a bit more walking before we went to lunch at Cafe de Orient, apparently a Spanish Queen had dined there. Lunch was tasty, and we were happy to have a pianist play while we ate.

We then went to the Museum de la Revolution, which is in the old Capitol building. As you walk in there is still evidence of uprising on the walls, gunshot holes beside a bust of a famous Cuban from a student rebellion in 1957. This building is where the Revolution was eventually won, and Batista fled from the country.

One thing I have learnt is that the revolution was headed by Fidel Castro,  Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Jose Marti. And Marti is given most of the credit for the organisation and leadership of the Revolutionaries. Castro was the “General” who led the fight, along with Che.  Castro came more to the front after the revolution was won.

After visiting the Museum de la Revolution, we boarded our Bright Red 1958 Thunderbird Coupe for the afternoon. The car was driven by a guy with gold capped teeth and a smile as wide as the car. He claimed the car used to be owned by one of the mistresses of former President Batista.

We drove under the entrance to the Havana Harbour via a 700m long tunnel to the Morro Cabana. A defensive fort build by a King of Spain to defend Havana from attacks similar to the one of the British that saw the Cuban forces in Havana defeated,  it cost a fortune to build.

While we were at the fortress we were lucky enough to see a ceremonial firing of a cannon to mark an anniversary of a Central American country (Not really sure what it was!). A platoon of about 10 troops in old military uniforms marched up to the cannon carrying  muskets with bayonets on the ends. They stood guard around the cannon as two of them proceeded to light the fuse. After a loud pop and a puff of smoke, a lot of wadding went flying into the air from the cannon, and the troops marched away (some of them smiling). We then drove to a fruit market. The fruit in general was pretty good, but the bananas and a few other fruits looked a bit “ripe”.  We love walking through different markets around the world, seeing what people are eating and you get a lot of colour and a feel for the place you’re in.

From there we drove to “Revolution Square”, a huge monument to the Revolution and Jose Marti in particular, very imposing. There were shadow outlines sculptures of the faces of Che and another revolutionary on the government buildings in the square precinct. Unfortunately we were a bit late getting here and it was shut, so on we went for a drive through of a VERY large cemetery, 850 hectares, and it was full! All the plots are crypts, and after two years the bones of the people are exhumed and stored in boxes somewhere else, to make room for others. The crypts are permanently owned by the families of those interred there. After we left there we drove through some of Havana’s more fancy / posh neighbourhoods and saw the old stately homes of the wealthy Sugar Barons (and their like) from pre revolution days. These  days, the homes are used as Embassies or government residences. Some, but few, are still owned by the originals families. (Those that didn’t flee Cuba after the Revolution.) Continuing on our drive we drove through a rainforest area on the edge of Havana city. It was very green and lush, a nice cool change from the city and the heat of the day. We finished our drive and day with a Cocktail at the Salon de la Fama in the Nacional Hotel. It’s a hotel used by the rich famous in the days and years after the Revolution, where Castro entertained.

We finished our day with a Cuban dinner and dance show at Centro Asturiano with the show Havana Queens, just down the road from our hotel.  The food in Cuba has been generally uninspiring, it just lacks seasoning and something to lift it, we knew this before we came here. The show consisted of a 6 piece band playing for a short time, then a dance troupe dancing for a while and so on. Yes, we have called this  our “Cultural” show for the trip. We don’t do this sort of thing well! The dancing and music were both ok, but could have been MUCH shorter!!

Our night/day finished around 11:30pm, it had been a very long but enjoyable day.

 

Day 16  Havana Cuba and Las Terrazas

Cuba Day 3

Today we spent in the Cuban countryside at Las Terrazas, 50-60km from Havana, a 1 1/4hr drive. In 1968 the Cuban government began planting over 6,000,000 trees in a 50 square Km area northwest of Havana, it had previously been logged. The project has gained UNESCO status as a Biosphere reserve, and has a resident artist colony. The first inhabitants of the colony were/are called “The Believers” and all those that came after the founding of the colony are called “Non-Believers”.  The believers got the best houses overlooking the lake.   They don’t own the house but can live there and then pass it down to their family when they die.

It was interesting walking around and seeing the housing and village life. We called into a few galleries while we were there. Deb bought some eco cards in one and in another we tried to get a picture done by Lester Campa, where he combined the faces of John Lennon and Che Guevara, but they didn’t have any of a size we wanted. During our walk around we stopped and had tea/coffee at Cafe Maria. I had their special Ice Coffee and Deb had tea. Kieran I thought of you, it was delicious. We had lunch at a vegetarian Restaurant, “Eco-Restaurante El Romero”. Soup main and desert, all pretty different, tasty but could have done with some seasoning.  After lunch we took a drive to the river that flows through the colony. It’s a spot where tourists can stay, swim and generally relax.

After that we drove back to Havana for a quiet afternoon before a “Luxury” dinner at a Palador (Private Restaurant). More on that in the next blog 🙂

 

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