The Adventure Begins

I’ll skip the boring, taking several planes, close gate connections part of our first day of the trip and go straight to landing in Santa Clara, Cuba.  Preparing to land, we had a good view of what rural Cuba looks like from the air.  There’s lots of fields that are under cultivation, some even with irrigation.  Roads crisscross the landscape and they even appear to be paved.  It was also apparent this is a tropical region with the occasional palm tree dotting the countryside. 

The airport was not really any different than any other small developing country we’ve visited. Being in the Caribbean, we were not surprised to find a mid-afternoon rain had descended upon us.    Our first surprise of the trip came in the form of 50’s era cabs they had hired to transport us to our hotel, The Santa Clara Libre.  Our cab encountered a street under repair with wet cement filling hole in the concrete.  Somehow our driver didn’t recognize the hazard and drove directly into one of drying ruts which meant we were stuck.  Words were exchanged between our driver and the person in charge of the repairs.  A group of teenage boys came to our rescue and pushed us out of our dilemma. 

The hotel was somewhat what I expected, clean but very Spartan.  Our private bathroom was also plain but would work.  We took a few minutes to freshen up before heading down the street to exchange the Euros we brought into CUCs, the currency for the tourists.  We brought euros because the Cubans impose a 10% penalty when exchanging US dollars.  This is a cash only economy with US credits serving as nothing more than plastic bookmarks. 

We walked down street for a group dinner.  The small diner had a nice variety of foods from ropa vieja, the shredded beef dish I expect to see almost everywhere, to pasta and even pizza.  Cerveza (beer) rounded out our meal.  I can’t wait to see what an entire day brings us!