Friday December 5, 2014

Moa is a large city with a university and hospital. It also has a large nickel industry. As we left heading towards Baracoa, we saw the industry in all of its glory!

The road was good for about 10kms until we passed the last factory and then it started to get a little rough. Nothing too bad, it wasn’t a busy road and we could use both sides as we needed to avoid the potholes or rough surface.

There were three major hills coming out of Moa, all of the road surfaces were rough, which made it very difficult on the 11% grade. Both of us had to walk part of the hill because of the rough road surface. On the last hill Ralf was waiting for me, he was calm and said this is what this ride is all about.

R:        Listen to the wind in the trees

J:         All I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears

R:        Feel the silence

J:         I can only feel my heart about to leap out of my chest

R:        Hear the trickling stream coming down the mountain

J:         That is the noise of the sweat falling of the end of my nose

Ralf looked at me and we were both laughing. We carried on down the hill laughing. I am glad we cycled today, it was a lovely route. A hilly ride, we ascended 748 metres and descended 740 metres. For every hill we climbed we came down the other side with no elevation gain at all by the end of the day. The road wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Probably because it wasn’t raining.

As we came through the National Park, the road went from bad to worse, but because it was dry we were able to cycle very well up and down the hills.

We came into one village area in the middle of nowhere where there were street vendors. We had hoped we could pick up some bananas which we did but we also bought this cone, which contained a mix of coconut, sugar and guava fruit.

High sugar content but it kept us going for a while. We also bought the Cuban version of a Florentine. Again lots of cane sugar and almonds and nuts, really sweet.

As we approached Baracoa, about 15 kms out it started to rain. We sheltered on a bridge, under a tree for a while. People were in the river doing their washing and shouted to us to come and stay dry under the bridge. We knew we would not be able to get the loaded touring bikes down the grassy bank or back up again so we stayed put.

About 5 kms outside of Baracoa I could smell chocolate, we were passing a chocolate factory. Apparently Baracoa is the Chocolate capital of Cuba – why are they not capitalizing on the fact that everyone loves chocolate and doing tours of the factory. In the Town there are a couple of Cafés de Cacao, where you can even get a Mohito with chocolate in it! We decided to have our dessert at one of them which was chocolate milk and chocolate ice-cream.

When we came into Baracoa, we wondered what all the fuss was about. It looked like many of the small towns in Cuba, run-down. However, once again we came into the historic centre and it is very nice. I went into the InfoTur office to find out where the Casa was we had been referred to by Jorge in Camaguey. There are hundreds of casas in Baracoa, I wonder how they all make a living. There are also 4 economy hotels with prices ranging from CUC 30 to 40.

After dinner and our lovely dessert at the Café de Cacao we wandered around the downtown. We got the usual requests for money, where are you from? Etc. However, this time even the dogs recognized we were tourists. This little perro sniffed my leg and then proceeded to follow us around the town and back to our casa. Anytime another dog approached us this little perro growled and chased it of, we were his tourists and hopefully he would get some food from us. He didn’t as we had already eaten, but he was a very cheerful little dog with his tail wagging all the time.

This is our rest day stop over before we climb more hills towards Guantanomo and Santiago de Cuba on Monday. Two days to Guantanomo and another two days to Santiago, where we will have our week off the bikes.