This morning we had a guided walk booked that would take us up to the top of El Taburete mountain. This area was originally all forest but all the trees were removed in the early 1900s when the Americans had a charcoal plant here. After the revolution a massive reforestation activity took place planting almost a million trees in 6 years. They built terraces to plant the trees which is why the area it is called the terraces and the area became a reserve in the early 1990s and focused on eco tourism which I think may have made it one of the first to do so. It was on this mountain that Che Guevara spent a lot of time training and living with his fellow revolutionary soldiers as they prepared for the US backed invasion of Cuba. We started the walk actually in the hotel and our guide explained that we would be climbing 450 metres above sea level so we would be taking it quite slowly up first we had to walk down through the hotel grounds to the cottages at the bottom where the local families live. We walked past trees that shed their bark and the locals call these tourist trees as after 15 days they start to peel! We had been walking for a while up a gentle slope when Edwardo (the guide) said now the climbing begins! I thought we had been doing that but no we were about to start walking up what looked like a dry waterfall, I am sorry for the Cuban’s that the rainy season hasn’t brought them much rain and it is sad for the planet that global warming means this is the case but I am really glad there wasn’t any water flowing down as it was hard enough as it was. We walked for about two hours up this waterfall stopping to look at some very pretty birds on route, Edwardo had all the of the birds calls on his mobile phone so when he heard one he played that and the bird got nearer to us so we could have a look at it, unfortunately they were still quite active so spotting them was a bit of a challenge but we did see a hummingbird, the national bird of Cuba which has a red stomach and a woodpecker although I am not totally convinced that we were looking at the same thing! Finally we reached the summit to see a monument dedicated to Che Guevara, 450 meters above sea level and with fantastic views. This is the narrowest part of Cuba so you can see the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other. The monument is a little strange but to be honest if they had to climb up to build it they may not have put it together properly! Apparently it represents Che defeating America but there is an amount of imagination required to spot this. The good news was that we had finished climbing up the waterfall and we would take a different route down, the bad news was that although it was significantly easier it was still wasn’t easy but eventually we made it to the bottom and I think it had only taken us just over an hour to come back down. At the bottom the trail comes out on the San Juan river where there are a couple of natural pools we could have gone swimming in if we wanted but we declined. The walk we had done so far was about 6km but when this is straight up it feels a lot further, we had been asked if we wanted to walk back (along the road which was 3km more) or take a taxi, we had decided we would take a taxi and I was really grateful we had done this as I think the extra 3km may have been a step too far! What we didn’t expect was for lunch to be included, but we had a half of chicken, rice, potatoes and carrots plus a drink of our choice included which was great but as with everywhere else we have been the portions are quite large so we didn’t manage to eat more than about half of it. Edwardo then called for the taxi which seemed to involve us walking half way up the road, it took a while to come and when it did it was a motorbike truck that we sat in the back of. I don’t think it actually went any faster than we would have walked but it was definitely a lot easier. By the time we got back to the hotel it was about 3pm so we jumped in the shower then sat on the balcony looking at the pictures and seeing if we could update the website before heading off to the bar for a well earned drink.
