Monday, 6 June 2016

Day 17 Camaguey to Santiago De Cuba

Up at 6:30. Packed bags. Breakfast, which included cups of tea and mango and even better no band. Left the hotel at 8:00 for a long day’s drive.
My mission today was to capture more party sayings and goats. So I sat in the front seat, which ended up costing me lots of time at the end of the day. I had to crop every photo to delete parts of the bus. I did have long chats with Jose during the day about life in Australia.
Sign for unsafe passing

The countryside varied between the very flat to the hilly final area. On the flats there was rice, corn, sugar and cattle. On the hills were bananas, sugar cane, cattle and goats. The flats were very fertile and there was several significant rivers, but soon after crossing one river the country just totally changed to hilly and so did the houses to smaller, mainly wooden in the small villages and much smaller holdings.
one of the many grass cutters 

The same variety of traffic on a narrower road, but after Bayamo the road was appalling in places – pothole after pothole, so passing horses/ carts/ bicycles was slightly more difficult and often we had to wait until it was safe. There were several close calls involving goats walking in front of the bus! Lucky Vladimir was alert.
A delicious beef lunch at Bayamo. Once again the town square was lined with families enjoying time together under the shade of the large trees.
Another long section took us to the Basilica dedicated the Virgin of the Caridad del Cobre. The name comes from the nearby copper mines, which are now closed. The inside of the church was just beautiful, as were the magnificent stain glass windows. There were many bunches of yellow sunflowers – tokens to Mary. 


Only a short trip down to the city of Santiago and our hotels. The others were over the road and we were in the Hotel Las Americas. definitely not 5 stars. Thankfully on the bottom floor, as we have just heard that the elevator is not working! Gave our heavy dirty stuff to the chamber maid for cleaning ($18.60) and unpacked, before settling in the lobby to have a cuppa and work on our computers.
Unfortunately my photos were not downloading quickly and I discovered my computer’s memory was almost full, so I downloaded most of the photos onto a memory stick to clear space. This then created an additional problem of the computer needing to download every photo on the card, rather than reading just today’s. Consequently what should have been a quick task took hours. Most of which was done in the bathroom because that is the only power point we can use. 
In the meantime we went to dinner and were the only ones in the restaurant. Serenaded by the two person group- reasonable fish for main course, but the mango ice cream was lovely. Back to the room to keep working until late.
Finally finished photos, but it was too late to go out to foyer to email news. Our air con is possibly the loudest one in the world? Lucky I have ear plugs.

Bedtime.
this is the ordinary transport of the locals

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