taco's & toucan's travels ~ 2019

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DAY 37

Week 6

SANTIAGO DE CUBA (Santiago de Cuba, CUB) to SIERRA MAESTRA (Granma, CUB)

Saturday April 20^th, 2019

TODAYS MILEAGE – 136 miles / 219 kilometres

TRIP MILEAGE – 17,151 miles / 27,602 kilometres

An early morning rain shower greeted the new day and I ‘d have to say the smell just after rain, is one of the best you can experience. It has a freshness all off its own.

The morning was spent at the Museo 26 de Julio - Moncada Barracks where Fidel Castro first launched his revolution in 1953 – an unmitigated failure in which he barely escaped with his life. Next stop was the Cementerio de Santa Ifigenia (Santa Ifigenia Cemetery) which holds the remains of most of Cuba’s founding fiqures and significant people in its history – José Martí , María Magdalena Cabrales Fernández the mother of the nation and just recently - Fidel himself.

A quick stop at the original Bacardi Rum Factory to procure some $80 USD bottles of Santiago de Cuba Metucelen rum for $15 USD on the “Grey Market” at the distillery door and then out to the adjacent Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca (Castillo del Morro), which protected the town from pirates, buccaneers and corsairs like Sir Francis Drake and Captain Henry Morgan.

After a late lunch at the only empanada place in the county – The Melia Hotel, we hit the road for a 3-hour bus ride to our drop off point, where we would take smaller vehicles into our mountain accommodations at Villa Islazul Santo Domingo for the night. The premise being to take a 4-hour roundtrip hike in the morning to Fidel Castro’s mountain Headquarters.

Dinner was a very local affair at a farmers’ place, just up the road from our hotel, where we were treated to whole roasted pig with rice and vegetables.

With no water at all in our room and an air conditioner that had no controls, other than us having to manually trip the main circuit breaker, killing the room lights as well. Little did we know it, but we were in for a miserable night as the AC was running flat chat in Arctic wind storm blizzard mode and colder than a mother in-laws kiss - we turned it off, opened the windows and doors to allow some natural airflow in. Unfortunatley for us, this was to signal the start of the mozzie's all night all-you-can-eat buffet.