Today we left Havana and set off for La Terrazas which is a UNESCO site just over 50km from Havana. On the way we saw a number of children heading off to school, we had been told the other day that the colour of your uniform denotes the year you are in rather than the school you go to and this defiantely seemed to be the case as after we had left Havana we saw a number of people in the brown uniform that we had seen in town, this denotes older children, and also the red which denotes much younger children. The drive took about an hour and a half which meant we arrived at our hotel about 10:30, this would have been fine as we had planned to have a swim and a relax today before exploring the area tomorrow, unfortunately the pool is ‘broken’ so we had to just sit around in the hotel. Not all bad as it is in a fantastic location with great views. The hotel has trees growing though it, a massive one in reception and slightly smaller ones in the other areas. We were given a welcome drink which was basically rum, lemonade and sugar, sounds horrible but was actually quite drinkable although too many and it would impact your ability to stand! We sat in the main area for a while then Chris went off for a wonder while I read my book, great way to relax after the heavy pace of Havana which I really enjoyed and would happily go back to but it is definitely one of those places that is better in ‘soft focus’ the lovely classic cars look amazing but when you get closer you can see the rust marks under the paintwork, there are basically 4 types of car in Cuba, the classic car which is licensed and has to still be true to the original, petrol engine, no air conditioning and everything as close to how it was when sold, this causes a few problems despite the care given by the owners after 60 years of constant use things start to wear out, the second group is the classic car that is not registered, some of these have been changed to Diesel engines which was a good idea for economy but a bad idea now as they can’t get any fuel as diesel is harder to get than petrol, these tend to be used as taxi’s or are used privately. The third group are the yellow cabs, these are more modern with air conditioning but still not new by any stretch of the imagination the final group is everything else. These are private cars ranging from the heyday of the Lada to something newer but possibly not what we would call a new car, these are used by everyday Cubans and seem to sometimes be used by the community others just by families. We found a great spot overlooking the valley and had a drink then went into lunch. We have decided that we would just take it easy today so after lunch I settled down with my book and spent the afternoon engrossed in that. Unfortunately the wifi is quite limited here so about 7pm we went to the bar where the signal was stronger to try to upload today’s photos and blog before dinner. If you are reading this then it worked!
