Saw the last piece of the Cuban puzzle today. We drove from Havana on the north (Atlantic) coast, across the island to the town of Trinidad on the south (Caribbean) coast where we will be based for the next couple of days.
Our first stop, after an hour and a half's driving, was the small town of Australia, where we had morning tea. They named it Australia because, when it was settled, it was near nothing, had only dirt roads, and was way down south. They even had their own railway with Australia printed on each of the coaches. We enjoyed the best coffee we've had so far, so Australia seemed pretty apt to me.
Australia was the start of the section of today's trip for an hour or so across a very large swamp, and along the side of a big stretch of water known famously as the Bay of Pigs. The story goes that in 1961, with the communist revolution showing no sign of collapsing, Kennedy decided to try to sponsor a counter revolution of Cubans who preferred the rule of the Bautistas. Not having any congress authority to use military force, and not wanting to affront the USSR, he couldn't send US troops. Instead he recruited and funded 1500 mercenaries from Florida and other places, and landed them on the remotest, swampiest part of Cuba - the Bay of Pigs.
They were ill-equipped, and badly trained, and it was only three days before Castros forces took tanks down the muddy road and routed them. It was a public relations disaster both domestically and internationally, and a humiliating defeat. It was also the justification for Krushchev to start erecting nuclear missiles in Cuba, so that they would never be invaded by the US again, which directly led to the most dangerous moment the world has lived through, and ensured that anti-Cuba sentiment in the US has lasted over 50 years.
However, today that muddy tank road is a pretty decent bitumen road, and we drove through villages that now specialise in allowing tourists to swim, snorkel and dive around the coral reefs of the Caribbean metres off their coast. Whilst I have no internet to verify it, our guide claims that it is the second biggest coral reef in the world after Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Along the way, our guide produced his ration book for us to have a look at. If I've got the story right, Cubans can buy anything they want - well, anything they can afford. However, there are a certain number of staples that have prices fixed low by the government, and every citizen is provided with a small ration of each of these, administered by the ration book system. Rice, flour, cooking oil, sugar, coffee and fuel were some of the items in the book, but my Spanish wasn't good enough to recognise them all. The big complaint is that the rations are not big enough to live on. Cubans also enjoy free hospital care, and free education including tertiary education with a free lunchtime meal. However, our guide was quick to point out that lunches during the crisis of the 90's was usually only bread or beans.
We arrived in the historic town of Cienfuegos for a late lunch of more than just beans, which we enjoyed at a little cafe on the waters edge. The town centre is laid out like any Spanish town with a huge central square, and we wandered around after lunch looking at the many art galleries which seem to be the town's main claim to fame.
Got to Trinidad about 4pm, where we were delivered to our private casa. Seems that in this casa we will be the only guests, and dinner was served for 2 on our own balcony outside our room as the sun set. A wonderful 4 course meal of lime chicken. Probably the nicest meal we've had in Cuba, but I was terribly embarrassed that each of the courses was so large that several plates went back untouched, especially after spending the afternoon looking through their ration book.
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