To Holguin

A day of travel, so no pictures. This was when camera memory was expensive and I didn't take extraneous shots. I gave one of my old T-shirts to Yumi's cousin. It was from a conference and had a slogan in front. She said, I hope this doesn't say something like Down with the revolution in English. I assured her that wasn't the case. I packed then took a picture of Yumi and her cousin. She extracted a promise to send her a copy, which I eventually did, as a postcard.


I met the girls at the appointed spot in the centre of town. It turned out the driver wanted $80 instead of the $70 negotiated by our contact. We declined and asked around for another car. Eventually the driver gave in and we set off at 1400. (In retrospect it seems silly that we balked at paying $2.50 more each. I think it was our feeling that the increased price was a broken promise.)


We headed west to Moa. The car was an old Lada and the driver swerved all over the road to avoid potholes. Once he failed to see one in time. He cursed and waved his fist when we hit the pothole. As you can tell there was little traffic on the road. He also coasted down hills to save petrol.


Moa is the centre of nickel mining in Cuba and an important source of revenue to Cuba. It is operated jointly with a Canadian company. There wasn't much visible from the road except a smelter plant. There were some glimpses of coastal scenery though.


The driver stopped to fill a couple of times, once in Moa and again in a small town. The second time, he put us down outside a small shop and went off to get the petrol, probably to avoid being seen with a car-full of foreigners. Who know what strings he had to pull to get the petrol. At the back of our minds was the worry that we might be stranded in a small town for the night.


We arrived in Holguin after nightfall. The driver dropped us off outside our chosen casa and zoomed off. I think he had spotted a policeman or civil guard approaching. Unfortunately in the rush one of the Australian girls had forgotten to take her hiking boots out of the trunk. In the next couple of days, we tried to help L track down the taxi, but to no avail. She ended up looking for and buying another pair of boots for her hiking trip in the Sierra Maestra—not an easy purchase in Cuba.


Staying in the casa were a German woman and a Chinese man who ran a travel agency in Tokyo. The woman was going to take the camionito (lorry bus) to the coast the next day. She promised to tell us how that went if we met again.


I had not had any lunch that day, except for some peso peanuts with beer. Holguin seemed quite lively because of the romeria (religious festival) going on.