Santa Clara
Trip Start
Oct 09, 2006
1
16
62
Trip End
Jun 15, 2007
Santa Clara,
Cuba
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
The bus brought us to Santa Clara.
As soon as we stepped off the bus we were greeted by a little man with a yellow motorbike helmet asking if we´d like to stay at his place. It´s kinda funny the way they ask you, you see, by law they are not allowed to approach the foreigner to offer the room, it´s up to the foreigner to approach the house. The obvious problem with this is that nine out of ten times the flippin foreigner doesn´t know where they are, unless they have a bang up to date guidebook (which by the way we don´t, we only picked one up in Mexico for free that´s 6 years old). They kinda slide up next to you and ask if you are looking for a Casa, then they´ll lead you to a taxi outside and the taxi driver will bring you to the Casa... very complicated stuff indeed.
04 Hitchhikers on the road
After seeing the room, we said that we´d stay and that we´d eat dinner there also (5 cucs each). We then went walkies in Santa Clara. Tis a nice enough town, but absolutely bugger all to do. We found it difficult enough to find a place to eat, the only thing that they seem to serve is ham and cheese sandwich. The only thing to do in this town is to look at the Che Guevara Monument.
Now is probably a good time to tell all those who didn´t know..... Che Guevara´s granny is Irish!!!! Yup, his daddy´s mammy is from Co. Mayo and her surname was Lynch. So there... us Irish are flippin involved in everything!!!
The monument is located about 1km from the centre of the town. We walked out there and were pleasantly surprised that we weren´t pestered once, not once. There is a big massive column, on top of which there is a huge bronze statue of Mr. Guevara.
Across the road from this is a plaza type thing, where we sat for about an hour or so, just watching the people from the all inclusive hotels pull up in the tour buses, pour off .... look at the monument... take their pictures... go into the museum... then pile back onto the buses... and ...vroom... back to the hotel. We really enjoyed the monument and the accompanying museum..
05 Cruisin with a Guitar in a 1950s Chevy
. look Sarah... that´s Che´s hat from when he was in the jungle with Fidel... look Sarah... that´s the butt of the cigar he smoked when he was the Finance Minister back in ´65.... Cool!! Then we were let through to the Memorial..... where the remains of Che along with 13 other chaps are housed/buried, here the eternal flame burns for him, lit by Mr. Fidel in 1997.We then ate dinner in the Casa and we got lashings of food, a gorgeous bean soup, along with salad, then we got pork... as mostly one does here. You see, the locals are not allowed to have beef, as the moo cows are owned by the state and are solely for export only. The same applies to lobster, though you get offered lobster on every street corner! The chickens have nothing to feed on, and so are usually fatty little feckers, so the best bet is pork.
Not much else to report on in Santa Clara!
Next up .... Trinidad.... and Sarahs birthday.
