We are out early today – 8:00am departure. Basically because we have a lot of ground to cover and you can never be sure of the traffic conditions getting to Sancti Spiritus and Santa Clara. We breakfast, rinse off in our drizzly little shower and head to the bus. Touch your luggage before you get on…..we all do…except Richard who we are watching get on another bus (to his credit, it’s a duplicate of ours) in the driveway! We’re just starting to head out to get him, when he realizes his error and heads our way! That was close (well, not really, but still!).
Bye bye Las Brisas….
(Sigrid and Robert are not sad to be going! Not Robert’s favorite place – for sure – and as we were checking out, they accused Sigrid of stealing a hand towel! She didn’t have 2 – only 1 – but they weren’t going to let her go until she went back to the desk to tell them about it. Insult to injury – since her A/C never worked the 2 nights we stayed there – no one could figure out what was wrong with it!)
It takes a while to get to Sancti Spiritus, one of the first villages developed in Cuba. It was settled in 1514, the same year as Trinidad, but has had much slower growth because of its inland location. No port = no growth basically. The streets are all very narrow, and there are lots of horse drawn carriages trotting about. We leave the bus, have a bathroom break (hotel, good bathroom), then head through the town on a pedestrian street, through a little local market and end up at a church at the other end of town. As we are walking, we noticed an enormous number of people with cakes. It must be cake day in Sancti Spiritus! Seriously – Friday must be the day some bakery makes its cakes, because there must have been 30 people walking by with these big luscious looking cakes. We never found the bakery – nor did we get any good pictures either – so you’ll have to use your imagination! We did get a picture of Ed looking out over the square in his Hosteria Antica Roma shirt – and one of another Jose Marti statue in the square.
Osmel and the bus meets us at the little church and we load up and head out once more. We are now heading to Santa Clara for lunch, and then to see the Che Memorial. Che!
On our way, we see men dressed all in yellow on the side of the road. These are workers, whose job it is to stop government vehicles in order to give the public rides. They are called Amarillos (yellow in Spanish). Now that Julie has pointed them out, we see them frequently, always with a group of people standing around them, waiting for the right ride to come along. We also learn during this ride that Julie’s main form of transportation is hitchhiking. She does not like the bus at all – her mom will take the bus, but Julie will not and has always found rides around –and to and from work (a 45 minute commute!).
We are sort of rushing to the Los Caneyes Hotel for our lunch. Another big group is coming in, and we want to be there first for many reasons, not the least of which because it is a buffet lunch. The hotel/resort is really different. It was constructed to recreate a village of aboriginal Tainos Indians. “Los Caneyes” is the name for their traditional round huts - and the hotel has faithfully recreated these huts as rooms and bungalows. It’s very natural here, with interesting fountains and wildlife representations.
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The hotel also has some incredibly ornate wood carvings. The ones below cover the reception building…doors, walls, windows….beautiful…
We’re about 20 minutes early for lunch, so the whiners start up with their complaints about being rushed out of the hotel this morning. But the rest of us are fine wandering these pretty grounds – and shopping at the outdoor “gift shop”. I found some really cool “bone” earrings; others are happy in the cool refreshing air, taking pictures and hanging out.
We do make it into the buffet before the other large group (thank heavens, because they are oriental – and well – we just won’t go there will we!). This buffet is huge – you name it – it’s on there – including rabbit – which fortunately Osmel points out to me that it is conejo (rabbit) not pollo (chicken)! Yeah, that would have been a huge tactical mistake. But as it is, there is anything and everything to eat, including hot dogs and hamburgers. We all get our fill….including Richard with this plate..
…yes you are seeing this correctly – a hamburger awash in mustard and ketchup, rabbit (ya!) and helado….quite the dessert plate! But speaking of desserts – Cubans are definitely the “sugar people”. Obviously originating from their overabundance of sugar cane, but continuing on in younger generations – everyone loves sugar! The cakes on the buffet even have granular sugar in them making them crunchy. It’s amazing the entire population isn’t obese by now!
After lunch, on we go to the Che Mausoleum. The mausoleum and museum is situated in Santa Clara because it was here, in 1958, that Che derailed a train of Batista soldiers and arms. After this incident, Batista fled, giving rise to the Castro rulership. The huge bronze statue on top of the memorial was made in Santa Clara. Fidel wanted to make the Che statue here, to be local, so bronze was collected from all the homes in order to create it.
Once inside we can’t take any pictures. We are escorted into the mausoleum and told to be silent in respect to the remains. The mausoleum allegedly holds Che’s remains and that of 29 other guerillas who were killed in the 1967 Bolivian uprising. Allegedly, because the remains were exhumed from a Bolivian site and transferred here in 1997 for the memorial. So is it really Che? Who knows, but the tomb sure does pay homage to his special place in Cuban history.
All is well as we are leaving, except Richard steps past the eternal flame that is at the end of the mausoleum. One of the guards yelled at him and Julie had to grab him back. International incident averted!
We get to spend a fair amount of time in the museum, which is really very interesting, depicting Che’s life and displaying lots of artifacts and possessions. He was married and had 2 children, one of whom is a doctor now. But the children aren’t famous or “popular” or anything. Just living out their normal lives. Different perspective on heroes and hero-worship. And as Julie said, he’s a hero, but she thinks there are other Cubans throughout history who are more important. We didn’t get to delve too much into who she thought was more important – but when asked if she has posters of Che and/or Fidel in her room (thinking along the lines of the Royalty in Thailand, etc.), her response was “Hell no! I’ve got Brad Pitt!” (Oh how we miss Julie now that we are home!)
Back outside on the Revolution Square (every city has a Revolution Square dedicated to a hero – Santa Clara’s is of course dedicated to Che), we hang around and take some pix before the rain comes!
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