Cuba Travel: Riding in the Lada through the Cuban Countryside

Title:
Cuba Travel: Riding in the Lada through the Cuban Countryside

Description:
February 23, 2009 was another gorgeous day and another great opportunity for more explorations of the city of Santiago de Cuba. Early, at 7:30 am, we took the hotel workers bus' into town again and spent an hour riding into Cuba's second largest town, all in the air-conditioned comfort of a modern Chinese built bus. An hour later we had arrived near the centre of the city and went for a short walk to the Parque Cespedes, Santiago's main square. One of the main sights on this square is the Hotel Casa Granda, a stately hotel built in the early 1920s. I had read that there was a great rooftop terrace on this hotel so we walked inside to find the elevator. A local by the name of Carlos joined us right away and provided us with all sorts of unsolicited tourist information in broken English. He started to show us around without asking, one of Cuba's many "independent travel entrepreneurs" (also called "jinetero"). When we left the hotel, Carlos kept following us and feeding us information about various local attractions, and finally led us to a local "paladar", a privately owned licensed restaurant (one of the few private enterprises that Cuba allows), and we sat down to have a breakfast. The meal was tasty and affordable. After a filling early morning meal we continued our walk and Carlos showed us one of the more popular sights in Santiago: the Escaleras de Padre Pico, a stairway of 52 steps that was built in 1899 under mayor Emilio Bacardi. These stairs are the entranceway to one of Santiago's typical neighbourhoods, El Tivoli. From here we continued our westward walk down the hill to reach the port area of Santiago which features a public area called Parque Alameda. From here our guide took us to a local Cuban market at the intersection of Calle Trocha and Linea where we saw real Cuban food shopping in action. My knees buckled a bit when I saw slabs of unrefigerated meat and even whole heads of dead pigs on offer. But I was told that the animals get slaughtered in the early morning and by noon everything is bought up; so refrigeration is apparently not all that important. The next step in our local explorations was a ride on a horse and buggy that took us past Santiago's old train station. Then we stopped off at the local rum factory, but our guide cautioned us not to buy from here because apparently all the money "goes to Fidel". He suggested to us to buy rum directly from some of the factory workers later. Apparently factory workers get 2 free bottles of rum a week and, and like most Cuban "entrepreneurs", they find away of turning that into cash. Past mid-day our horse cart took us back to the main square of Santiago de Cuba where we were told we could catch the hotel workers bus back into our resort. We would just have to be there at around 12:30 or 1 pm. Well, we arrived at the indicated spot and waited for about an hour and a half, but no bus arrived. Finally, we figured that something must have gone wrong and decided to catch a taxi. Licensed taxis in Cuba are usually fairly modern vehicles but they charge very high rates while unofficial taxis are much more affordable, but you might be riding in a 1940s vehicle that is held together with pantyhose and strings. We were approached by another local entrepreneur who offered us a ride back to the resort at a much cheaper price although the vehicle, a 1980 Lada, did not look all that encouraging. Various body panels had rusted through, there were no seatbelts, and I did not dare to look at the profile of the tires. But our driver assured us that he kept the vehicle in good running shape, so we agreed and hopped into this spartanic vehicle. Sure enough our driver took us back safely to our resort and shared with us a number of insights into the Cuban lifestyle. We had had another great day of discoveries in the beautiful city of Santiago. After another relaxing late afternoon by the pool we took in another show at the resort; this time it was a Broadway-styled show by our resort's gifted entertainment and dance crew. Another perfect day in Cuba...

Author:
travelandtransitions

Tags:
Cuba, Santiago de Cuba, Cuban dance, Horseback riding in Cuba, Cuban culture,