Cuba - Day 12 - January 14th

More "housekeeping" today. Aglaes, our host, volunteered to go with us to the bus station to get our tickets to Varadero. So, after breakfast we went to the bus station where, thankfully, she guided us through the process of getting our tickets much more easily and quickly than we could have done on our own (the place is bereft of signage - a little like the Toronto airport).

Off to the bank for money exchange, which also went smoothly.

At the tourist place we booked a 2 hour boat tour of the Bay for this afternoon and a trip to the Parque el Nicho for tomorrow. The latter, which all of our Cuban contacts say is a beautiful nature experience, is a full day outing so we are scheduled depart from Hotel La Union at 8 am.

Remember the truck transport vehicles, los camions, I mentioned in an earlier blog? It was these that came to mind when the woman at the tourist place mentioned, casually, that, at the pick up area, we would be getting on the "truck" for the trip to El Nicho. Of course, we concluded, she mis-translated truck for bus.

With those bits out of the way we thought we would have a sip of something at an outdoor bar and we both thought the waiter's suggestion of sangria sounded perfect. After our first sip we both realized that, in view of the persistent low grade symptoms we were both experiencing, this drink was not the best choice so we abandoned the sangria for water.

We did a quick tour of the small handicraft store on the plaza then went back to our casa to pick up some sun screen for the boat tour of the bay after lunch. We calculated that we could walk to La Aché, have lunch and easily arrive for the tour precisely on time. Which we did.

We had been told that the tour would be 2 hour and it would take us all around the bay, neither of which proved accurate. It lasted just under an hour and covered about a quarter of the bay shoreline - in short, it was a complete flop (well, almost complete) . Bob was determined to visit the tour ticket place to inform the woman of our dissatisfaction and to request a partial refund which he did later, resulting in a 5 CUC (25%) refund!

Cienfuegos Club

The reason they gave for the brevity of the outing was that the bulk of folks on that particular bay tour were members of group of German tourists who had only an hour available. So they abbreviated the tour for them and slipped us into that group presumably thinking we would just accept it - but they didn't count on the tenacity of Bob James to call them to account!

After the boat tour disappointment we walked down to the southern part of the Punta Gorda isthmus to check out the area past the hotel we had visited a day or so ago.

On the way we discovered an interesting little park with several large whimsical sculptures that we were happy to have found and speculated that the sculptors must have had fun creating these. You can't tell from this photo, but the meat grinder is about 12 feet tall!

Punta Gorda

The walk to the end of the isthmus took us to a small park and a gazebo like structure we had seen from the ferry (far right in this photo) and from this location there was a nice view of the bay with the mountains, where we are going tomorrow, in the distance (below).

An hour after starting for home we arrived at our casa both pretty tired and ready for some rest and another tasty meal by Fabio - and he did not disappoint.

That evening Bob's toe was quite sore - a problem that not only persisted but became more uncomfortable in the coming days.