January 1, 2015

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE

A late breakfast (9:00), we had bought some cereal to eat at the casa and we had fruit and coffee to go with it. It makes a nice change from eggs all the time. Ralf has worked out that by the time we leave Cuba we would have eaten almost 160 eggs each in three months. We don’t eat that many eggs in a year when we are in Canada!

We wandered around the downtown again and climbed up the bell tower.

The building houses a museum and of course you climb the tower to see the surrounding area. The museum depicted the history of the revolution in this area. The University students in Havana were trained as the militia and were trained in the hills surrounding Trinidad and the Sierra Maestras closer to the Santiago de Cuba.

Trinidad is the most expensive City we have been to in Cuba. Bottles of water are twice as expensive here than anywhere else in Cuba! Our lunch cost us CUC 21.00, 2 sandwiches, two cappuccino coffees and 2 sodas! The 10% gratuity was added on, this is the first time that it has ever happened in Cuba.

We are eating in the casa again tonight.

We went on the search for some bottled water and bumped into the two Canadians from Yellowknife. We chatted to them for about an hour and then headed back to the casa.

Tomorrow Ralf is going to cycle to Topes de Collantes. Last time we were in Trinidad (eight years ago) we brought mountain bikes with us from Canadian Tire. We attempted the ride to Topes Collantesback then, but were not prepared. We started late, we didn’t have sufficient water and had no idea how far the ride was. We had decided that we were not going to let the hill beat us and we would ride to the top (unloaded).I was going to do it, but then decided that I really didn’t want to cycle 21 ks up a very steep hill with 900 metres of climbing just to say I had done it. Especially as we have a long ride to Cienfuegos ahead of us.