Wednesday November 12, 2014

We left the casa early to have breakfast at the corner café, but it wasn’t open for breakfast at 7:30. We went back to the casa and loaded the bikes and left at 8:00am. We found a small café and had a lovely vege omelette with guava juice and coffee for 4CUC.

The route today was fairly flat and for the most part the wind was not a full head wind. The weather was good, and with the slight wind, it worked perfectly. We had planned a 60 kms route to Marti. If there was no casa in Marti we would continue another 7 kms to Itabo. Marti was a fair sized town but had no casas that we could see, so we carried on to Itabo.

When we got to Itabo we asked if there was any casa or rooms to rent in a private home. We were told there was nothing and were given directions to the hotel near Corillillo – that was another 28 kms. We looked at each other and decided we would carry on, there were a couple of smaller towns to go through maybe there would be a casa in those smaller towns. We were out of luck. Not only was it another 28 kms but the road deteriorated for about 15 kms. It was rough and very hard on the hands and the shoulders.

We passed the turn to the Hotel Elguea and headed into Corallilo. It was a bigger town and we thought that there was bound to be a casa there or at the very least a private home who would rent us a room. No such luck they directed us back to the hotel – another 10 kms. Ralf concluded that because there was an army base on the outskirts of Town and a police control post there was no unofficial casas to be had. We had already cycled 94 kms – matching our previous long distance record of 94kms in Australia.

We were both tired, but turned around and headed for the hotel ready to accept the cost, as we would be over 100 kms by the time we got there. As soon as we made the right turn the road kicked up and we were going into a head wind. Not a really strong wind, but something we didn’t need to battle with going into 100kms. The wind didn’t persist very long and we arrived at the hotel at 3:15 pm. The cost for the room is CUC 28 and includes breakfast – what a bargain and what a relief.

The hotel is quite large, but is almost empty. There are definitely more staff than guests.

I chatted to the security staff and they told me, we have the choice of casas and hotels for the next three nights. I was beginning to wonder if we had made a mistake cycling the northern carrerata. The road is not very spectacular, very rural, but fortunately we don’t have a strong headwind.