Havana
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Fri 9 Mar 2007 22:20
March 8th, Friday, Cien
Fuegos 2007
We've just returned from
three days in Havana, which was truly amazing. We shared a car with
Rarangi, and got there across country in about three and a half hours. The
main 'motorway' along the spine of Cuba is a six lane highway, notable for it's
absence of traffic, numerous horse drawn vehicles trotting down the 'hard
shoulder', bicycles heading all over the place, teams of oxen plodding
along, and clumps of people waiting patiently in the heat and dust for any
kind of lift. It was the oddest main road I have ever seen, with no
lane markings, and so little traffic, the driver wove around at will avoiding
pot holes and rough patches.
Havana was filled with all
the fifty year old jalopies we have got used to seeing, but Dale from Rarangi
was a vintage car expert, and kept shouting,'Look, there's a four door deluxe
Ford Prefect', or 'Wow, a pre-second-world-war .........' etc
etc. I was more riveted by the numerous equine equipages trotting
past, and had a long chat with a horse cab driver about the normal working day
for these horses.
Havana is hard to describe,
suffice to say it is really full of life and hope, beauty, music, dust, numerous
dachshunds and their pungent excresances, amazing crumbling buildings, fabulous
Cuban people, and great museums. The hordes of Dachshunds were
really bizarre. Some had crossed with strays and were only half
Dachshund. The girls stayed in Cien Fuegos with Mark and Louise on
Jem, so we had a really great time ambling around.
Tomorrow we are off to Cayo
Largo, weather permitting, which is the first leg of the trip to Isla de La
Juventud.
We are far enough north now
to get frontal systems from America, and it is all very confusing having wind
coming at you from different directions, after a year or so trades, faithfully
blowing from the east. There was a thirty knot north wind that
blew a cruiser onto the concrete pontoon, as his anchors dragged. He was
away, so all the other cruisers ganged up with ropes and fenders and stabilized
the boat against the pontoon, but not before it had smashed its port-side stern
corner off.