Tuesday November 25, 2014

Another horrendous days riding. I think we had about 10 kms of good roads, the rest was rough and narrow. Both Ralf and I were complaining about the road, how you can call this a main road, I have no idea.   Of course the constant wind didn’t help either.

We arrived in Las Tunas and checked the casa that Oscar had recommended. It was about 3kms out of the downtown area and no place to store the bikes. We decided to head out to the hotel, another 5kms. When we got to the downtown area of Las Tunas we spotted a pink casa with 5 stars! Their own evaluation of the casa not something that Michelin would assess.We stopped and checked it out, it was clean, with good air conditioning, fan and a safe place for the bikes.We chose to stay here so that we can update the blog while we are in the Town centre and enjoy the Town. Rather than be out of Town at a hotel.

I updated the blog in a cyber café (still controlled with the Exctra cards) and Ralf went for a wander around.

We noticed a large police presence and army presence in the Town. Much larger than in any other town that we have been in. Apparently, Las Tunas is known for its prostitution and black market goods.

After the blog update we went for a drink and met two English men from Leicester and South Yorkshire who had married Cuban women. We chatted to them for a couple of hours, it was very interesting to hear that they had been coming to Cuba for years and had also seen the changes.

We noticed the bar had wi-fi – first time ever in Cuba. We thought we might be able to update the garmins on the website. We went back to the casa and picked up the laptop and the garmins. Unfortunately we were unable to connect to the Garmin website to update our routes, but we were able to check out the American Adventure Cycling website. I think if we can get on a wi-fi website again we might be able to order the maps we need for the southern tier.

We chatted to a Native American (Navaho) who has family in California, and has a “significant other” and a daughter in the Town.

We went to a nice restaurant for dinner and spoke to an Austrian who comes here regularly and really enjoys Cuba but is concerned about the changes that he has seen over the last few years.

It was interesting talking to other tourists today. Most of them have houses here and spend time with their Cuban family as well as living in their own countries. The Austrian was the only one who didn’t have family here.