Friday December 19, 2014

We left the resort at 8:45, a little later than we should have done but it was good to be back on the road again.

The sun was out as we cycled away from the resort on a nice paved road, but we knew that wasn’t going to last. The paved road that is. We got to the small town of Chivirico and about 7 kms past the town the paved road petered out to hard-packed gravel, then it changed to rough road to a bit of paved road and alternated between rough and bad for the next 35 kms. We had a good tail wind today and only a few hills to climb.

This coastal road is very beautiful and if it wasn’t for the poor state of the roads, I would class as it as one of the best coastal routes in the world. The road from Moa to Manzanillo is approximately 500 kms long and would be an excellent scenic drive. But the roads have to be seen to be believed.

Part of todays route, some of the bridges had collapsed, due to the hurricane a few years ago, and have not been repaired yet. Parts of the road had collapsed into the sea, very precarious.

What makes this route so beautiful is the way the mountains hug the coastal road and the colour of the sea changes from turquoise to a deep blue. There are little bays where you could stop for a swim and small villages some of them in the hills.

As we came through the small town of Uvero, we encountered a large group of school children celebrating the release of three of the Cuban “spies”. They were cheering and chanting vive cuba, vive cinco.

We got to the campismo at about 12:30. A campismo is similar to a campsite – but campismos have cabins, not tent pitches. Our room is small with two single beds and an ensuite bathroom. No hot water except what has been heated by the sun, it was pleasantly warm when we had our showers. We pushed the two beds together so that we could get both bikes in the room.

We had some lunch, and a beer and chatted to a fellow touring cyclists that is heading in the same direction as us until Manzanillo then he is heading back towards Bayamo and Baracoa. I have given him some of the casa addresses that we stayed at. Another couple of touring cyclists came in while we were chatting to the Swiss cyclist – they are heading in the opposite direction heading towards Santiago de Cuba and Baracoa, encountering headwinds all the way. They cycled from Pilon this morning which is our destination tomorrow – 73kms.

We had a little wander around the campismo, it is on a rocky beach and has several cabins ranging from 2 per room to 6 per room. There are a lot of young Cubans here. There is also a little bit of wildlife in the way of a small herd of goats, chickens and some really noisy birds. I am guessing we will have to have our earplugs in tonight.

When we got back to our room the power went out, there seems to be quite a few power outages on this side of the island. We took advantage of no electricity and had an afternoon siesta.