Cuba - Day 13 - January 15th

An early breakfast today so that we can be at the Hotel la Union where we are to depart for our trip to the Sierra del Escambray and the Parque Nacional El Nicho. When we arrived at the Hotel there were 3 or 4 people in front including two official looking fellows. We asked about the tour to the park and they informed us that we were in the right place and we should go to the multicoloured TRUCK a few meters away. So our CubanaTour person was wrong about the duration of the Bay tour but not about the truck! In the end, it made for a rough but interesting trip into the mountains.

Remember to click on any photo to see a larger image.

En-route we stopped at a small town before reaching the mountain roads for our guide (she was called to duty this morning because the regular guide was ill) to change from her city clothes and shoes to "hiking" attire. We stopped in front of a school with images of Che and Camilo Cienfuegos on the school "banner" (for want of a better word) above the school door.

Oh yes, note the bust of José Marti on the right just in front of the school - as I said, he is everywhere!

Children were in the yard in front of the school having a snack and some were having a good time and a good laugh at our expense, it seemed - one boy kept making a particular hand gesture toward us, so, not realizing, until later, that these were considered slightly obscene, I returned the gesture, much to his delight.

A brief word about Cienfuegos whose image appears frequently, like this, in prominent places - you may recall that it, along with Che's, was prominent on a building at the Plaza de la Revolución. Cienfuegos apparently became the second most popular man in the revolution after Fidel Castro, though he was later overshadowed by Che. He died early in the revolution in a mysterious plane mishap though, it seems, neither the plane wreckage nor his body was ever found.

After a very bumpy, gear grinding and wind blown ride along narrow pitted roads we arrived at a small town, Cumanayagua, at a high point where we stopped briefly for us to look around, take photos and visit the baño.

It was definitely worth the stop as there were some nice vistas and other good photo opportunities including the flowers in these photos. Unfortunately, we neglected to ask the type of the orange flowers covering the roof and elsewhere, so I can't say what kind of flower it is.

Local folks sitting on benches in the small plaza and a couple of donkeys resting, one in the middle of the road here and another tethered to the tree in the photo below.

After about 10 or 15 minutes here we were off again until, after a total of about 2 hours of more bone chattering driving (I'm glad that my bone density is up to it), we arrived at the Parque el Nicho.





The red tree top flowers seen in this photo are prevalent along the mountain road - their common name is African Tulip.






Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the entry to the park but "understated" would be a fair description. It consisted of a couple of vertical wooden posts spanned by another which displayed the name Parque Nacional El Nicho behind which was a relatively small dirt parking lot. To the right was a similar smaller structure marking the entry to the walking trail.

Here we acquired a local guide (quiet spoken but excellent) who led us on a 1 1/2 to 2 hour hike to a couple of small but beautiful water falls with swimming areas below the falls.

Along the way he identified some interesting plants, including flowers of a ginger plant (right), anise leaves and flowers, coffee plant, african tulips and a loofa plant. I have wondered where loofa items came from but had no idea that basic loofa material grew as a pod on a relatively small tree.

And, he told us that this is a major coffee growing area and many of the folks living around here make their living producing coffee. - at least the  beans - we didn't learn where it is processed.

Several places on this walk were quite challenging for both endurance and balance as you might be able to discern from a couple of accompanying photos. For example, while the bridge pictured here proved to be very solid, at first glance I was not convinced.

Below is a particularly steep descent and the log in the bottom right was the rather unstable "bridge" across the small stream.

And we were not through with vistas - this one appeared shortly after we emerged from the wooded areas above.

And there were more but quite different waterfalls.

Some members of the group (about 10 or 12 people) went swimming in one of the quiet ponds but Bob and I demurred.

You can see that they took care to provide a Red Cross life guard in the swimming areas.

After the walk we had a less than delicious lunch, included in the price of the tour and were entertained by 3 fellows who gave it their best. Following lunch we boarded our vehicle for the ride home where we arrived just before 5 pm. Someone along the way said that our truck was built in 1935 - if so, it is 77 years old!

We were both quite tired and Bob, who had been struggling all day with a sore foot, was now in quite a lot of discomfort, so it was a relief to get to our room and the anticipation of another very acceptable Fabio meal.

Tomorrow we are to join Fabio and his friend, who was apparently a professional baseball player, at a baseball game at the Cienfuegos stadium - apparently, if we understand correctly, this game is an early stages playoff game in pursuit of the championship of the Cuban National baseball league.