Monday, April 24, 2017

A Trip to San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba - Day IV


And now for something completely different . . .

CUBAN FACT OF THE DAY: The average Cuban makes about $40 CUCs a month. That is about $40 USD.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017:

Today we planned to split our forces based completely along sexual lines.

This La Casa Azul passageway
to the kitchen is a bit narrow

 Street Marker

I like the way that Cubans state their addresses.

Por ejemplo, La Casa Azul is located at 17 entre M y N, 56 altos, el Vedado, La Habana.

This would translate as 56 17th Street, upper floor, between M Street and N Street.

If you are in a car though, it is hard to read these low markers on the sidewalk at each corner, especially at night.

Breakfast at
Café Galeria Mamainé

We had a great time at dinner here last night, so we opted to return again this morning.

The breakfast menu
had lots of choices and
low prices

We were seated in the only air conditioned room in the Café, unfortunately the service was slow even by Cuban standards.

So, we entertained ourselves

First by reading this award winning cartoon series that was hanging on the wall with its story line and drawings both coming from one of the owners of the Café.

Then we played charades.

As I said, the service was slow.

Every good Cuban breakfast
comes with a hot dog, the new
breakfast meat

The experience here confirmed that we would no longer dare to eat breakfast anywhere but at La Casa Azul the rest of the week.

Our cook at La Casa Azul, Chela, is just flat out AWESOME! We vowed to never disrespect her again by eating breakfast out.

Sophie's Dad, Mark, nearly vomits
when some one calls it soda

To him, it MUST be called pop or soda pop, never just soda

When I saw the sign above Sophie's head, I just had to have a photo.

 Another vintage car

 Unrationed fruits and
vegetables again

As I mentioned at the start of the post, we were splitting up for the day.

We walked the four ladies to the nearby Hotel Nacional de Cuba for a pool day.

My goodness, these cars are
EVERYWHERE!

 Just a classic hotel

 The pool area was lovely

A pool day cost $22 CUCs per person.

This fee broke down as follows: $5 CUCs for the pool usage, $2 CUCs to rent a towel and $15 towards food and/or drinks from the pool bar.

GREAT DEAL if you ask me.

The Hotel Nacional de Cuba
has excellent bars

As for Mark and I, we were off to the small town of San Antonio de los Baños founded in 1775 and located about 18 miles southwest of Havana. 

Our cab driver
Anna Isabel

She knew, in theory, where we were headed but admitted not having been there in years. Signage for a small town like this, population 46,000, was poor at best and GPS has still not been invented in Cuba.

It must be said that finding a driver willing to takes us there and back was not easy as they view a 36 mile round trip journey the way we would think of going round trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

At one point about half way to San Antonio de los Baños, we stopped to ask a pedestrian if we were going the right way.

He told us to continue up the roadway and then ask another person. We did this about four times and got there eventually.

 We were in the middle of some
serious Cuban farm country

The towns along the way used
these horse drawn carriages
as public busses

We finally got to our destination in a timely fashion.

The reason for this odd excursion was that my Great Uncle Dr. José Ruiz de Villa and his family lived there back in the day.

I had great fun in the 1950s playing on the plaza in front of their home with my cousin Amadita and just wanted to see their home again.

It was a nostalgia thing obviously.

Now, could we find the right plaza? 

 José Martí was on the
first plaza we encountered

We arranged for Anna Isabel to pick us up in about an hour and started our quest.

That's not it

 Right location on this plaza,
but it didn't feel quite right

 Nope

There was another plaza
in the distance

Maybe that was the right one.

Two things for sure, A. San Antonio de los Baños has a lot of cool signs and B. we were the only two tourists inside the city limits today.

I was a bit hungry

Little market for the locals

 Not sure what this place was

This plaza was bigger
than the first one

 Camilo Cienfuegos

BINGO!

This is the place that I remembered!

We knocked on the door and asked the young man of about 30 years of age inside if Dr. Ruiz de Villa used to live there. He said that he thought so and that his Dad would know for sure but he was not at home at the time.

It was the right place, I was sure of it.

Mission accomplished, we continued to roam the city in search of a school in order to donate more materials.

 Commies

Cool Architecture

The Old Fox

Castro and Martí

Selling Liberated Products?

 Only Changó and Jobu know
what they sell here

 Nice corner building

The school we were in need of finding was just around the corner.

Cristina happily accepted
our gifts for the kids

 She really liked all of
the pencils we donated

Again, normally the school can give each student only one pencil per month.

Nice construction techniques

Mark enjoyed a 65 centavos
lunch at this fine dining spot

The ride back to the Hotel Nacional was much easier as the way back to La Habana was clearly marked.

Back at the Hotel Nacional
de Cuba's pool

Our foursome was still there and they still had enough money left on their collective $60 CUCs bar tab to buy a round of drinks and something for us to eat.

 Cuban sandwiches . . .
YUM!

Wedding pictures at the Hotel

And yet another cool car

Three of our princesses
on La Casa Azul balcony

For dinner, we ate next door at
El Rinconcito

Great food, low prices and a fun loving staff to be sure.

Such fun!

We would return later in the week for more dining high jinx.

Good example of Cuban
electrical wizardry

As the saying goes, "Como inventan los Cubans!"

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