Friday December 26, 2014

What a difference having a tail wind makes. We covered the distance between Las Tunas and Guaimaro in 2 hours 2 mins. In the opposite direction it took 2 hours 37 mins with a head wind and a slight uphill grade. We are back on the central carrerrata, the road was rough in parts where it felt like we were cycling on a washboard, but we made good time regardless of the road.

As we cycled along we saw a lot of turkeys trussed up and being sold along the side of the road. Maybe we will get turkey for New Years Eve instead of pig.

The other funny coincidence that happened today is that both Ralf and I celebrated major milestones. My Garmin clicked over to 15,000 kms and Ralf’s Garmin clicked over 10,000 kms. Now before any of you say that I have been wandering across the road too often. Ralf bought me my new Garmin the day we started riding in New Zealand last year. Therefore, it indicates all the kilometres to date. Ralf’s 10,000 kms indicates the amount of kilometres on his new Garmin which I bought for him in England for his birthday.

When we arrived in Guaimaro we stopped in the corner store where the casa owner works and unfortunately she didn’t have any room at her casa, but was able to call the casa across the road from her house and they had room.

We chatted to the other two guests, one of whom was from Michigan and the other from Winnipeg.

After we had showered, we walked into the Town and had lunch at a nice little restaurant. We were hoping to buy some water but there seems to be a shortage of bottled water again. It was getting really hot by the time we got back to the casa and so we had a little siesta.

This casa is for sale, they are in the process of doing some repairs. The owners family live in Havana and they want to move to Havana. This was unheard of a few years ago, Havana was a special area that you could not move to without special permission. They are asking 25,000 CUC for the casa and hope to buy an apartment in Havana for 7,500. The casa has 3 bedrooms all with en-suite, a living room, and kitchen. The odd thing about the casas that are for sale is there is no real estate agent. The owner puts a card in the window in the hopes that people will see it and buy the house!

We are having dinner in the casa, and then going to visit the other casa owner as she speaks really good English and said she would call the casa in Trinidad for us, where we will be for New Years Eve. This is the first time we have reserved a casa ahead of time, but we figured as New Year’s Eve is a big event in Cuba it would be a good idea to have a room reserved.

We chatted to Marie about the renewed relations with the US and she told us that everyone is very excited about the possibilities that will come from the renewed relations. She said it will be much better for Cuba, everything will be better.