An hour away by taxi is Sancti Spiritus. Its a pretty wee town on the banks of the Yayabo River, quiet and unassuming. It is undergoing government restoration yet seems to be just off the beaten tourist track. Its a nice quiet place to wander and check out the sights for the day before moving on bright and early the next day.
The road to Sancti Spiritus was just as pot holey as any other in Cuba but the landscape is getting abit greener and the crops are giving way to cattle. One of the things we have noticed on our early morning travels between towns is the number of men on the highway verges cutting grass. They are diligently out there before it gets too hot, slashing at the roadside grass with machetes, raking up the cuttings and bundling the grass into sacks which they sling on their bicycle or load up on their horse carts. Initially we thought they were men employed by the government to keep the roadsides tidy.
In actual fact they are cutting grass to take home to feed their bony horses, goats and cattle. Their home sections are virtually trodden dust, this roadside grass is their supplement, or, in some cases, their only food.
Hostal Paraiso is our destination in Sancti Sprirtus and our driver found it with ease. It is within a large family home and there appears to be about 5 rooms available for rent from the website we booked on. The blue house on the left of the pic is the hostal.
Rosie and The Operator ring the doorbell and wait…no one comes, Rosie rings again, she has been lucky so far with her choice of casas, her luck had to run out someday…was anyone home? Today we have encountered one where the owner maybe has popped out to do the shopping?
We are about to turn away, unsure of what to do with our bags when the door creaks open, Nona pops her head out, she is one very tiny, shrivelled, stooped old lady. She dosn’t smile as we introduce ourselves, Rosie gave her the booking confirmation paper, she cannot speak one word of English. She gestures us inside, points to a chair and holds up 5 fingers, we assume she wants us to wait 5 mins, she then proceeds to shuffle off….very slowly…is she still wearing her nightgown?
The house is typical to all others, from the outside it is just a plain coloured frontage with shuttered windows and bars covering them. The front door opens directly onto the footpath. Inside, the house is huge, it just goes on and on and up and up, twisting and turning around an open garden courtyard, funny, from the street it just looks like a small single story cellblock house.
We sit and wait, and wait,15 mins…20 mins…Rosie is getting abit twitchy. The house is deathly quiet and Nona has disappeared. Rosie thinks Nona is going to make us wait until our allocated check in time at 3pm….four hours from now. Someone else’s suitcases are sitting in the corner, we leave ours there too and tiptoe out the door making a hasty exit to explore the town.
Sancti Spiritus is a little treasure trove of crooked streets to wander around and is also full of colourful, picturesque and curious sights. The pictures below are not shops, they are private houses on semi quiet streets…glance into the door and you are looking straight into the lounge. Pause and look at the wares and Mama comes out to serve you in her apron. Pineapple anyone?
We head down to the River Yayabo where a concrete humpy back bridge spans it, built in 1815 in such a way it wouldn’t look out of place in the English countryside.
It was originally designed and built for colonial traffic, horse and carts…which still use it….hence, it is too narrow for trucks and cars….although there were alot of cars squeezing over it….you wonder about the load rating, but hey, they built things to last back then? Didnt they?
Rosie discovered the best place for pics was the terrace of a pub that overlooked the river and the bridge, it would be rude not to have a beverage and take respite from the sun. Maybe even a bite to eat would be nice…and yes, the lobster was delicious!
The riverside houses across the riverbank left alot to the imagination. They all appeared to be sinking into the river, the crooked lines of the walls and slumped foundations were kind of testament to this.
The riverbanks themselves were littered with rubbish and the water looked sluggish and dead. The houses look artistic at first glance, look closer and the grim reality of how people live sets in. All Rosie could think about was how big those tree rats were in Vinales, lucky our Casa wasnt on the riverbank.
Further into the distance a pipeline spans the river and more concrete, massed housing huddles riverside.
Walk to the other side of the bridge and look over the edge. Mind the traffic though, it all comes to a bottleneck at the bridge as all the traffic flows off the towns little pedestrian zone…which was incredibly quiet the moment I took this picture….
Looking over the edge you will see a beautifully landscaped riverside walkway that curves around the bend in the river.
This part of the old town is slowly being renovated by the government, look into the distance and the squalor is still there if you squint, but just far enough away to not offend the tour buses as they flash through.
Art works are set into the newly refurbished walls and people are living day to day in the nearly perfect looking street that lead up to the bridge, only now they have to contend with tourists stopping and taking photos of their frontages.
The residential streets of Cuba that line the old towns are pristine, as are the footpaths and gutters. A couple of times a day the lady of the house comes out and sweeps her frontage, a bucket of water is then swilled out the front door and the step and footpath are washed, they are a very house proud peoples and every place we have been into is spotlessly clean.
As mentioned previously, it is a shame about the countryside and waterways which are the local rubbish tips in lieu of any official dumps.
The main shopping boulevard is a very pretty space. Large clay pots which are native to this area are set in artistic clumps with plantings in them that line the pedestrianized street.
The streets are quiet at this time of the day as the sun is blistering hot, it allowed Rosie to just wander along and take some interesting pics of the town.
During our wanderings, Rosie saw a wee chihuahua poking its nose through a window grill, it looked so cute peeking out. Rosie gravitated closer and then the dog went rabid. Literally, it started rolling its eyes, barking like crazy, jumping up and down and foaming at the mouth…Rosie thought for a moment it was going to get through the grill and go straight for her throat. A voice started yelling in Spanish from inside the house at the dog….Rambo! Rambo! Rambo!….was all we could make out. A case of a little dog having to live up to its big name. Lol.
We decide to wander back to our Casa and see if we could officially check in. Like Groundhog day we ring the doobell and wait….Nona opens it after five minutes. She again says nothing, or even acts like she recognises us. She turns around and shuffles back into the house and disappears. Rosie and the Operator look at each other and re take the seats that we originally occupied three hours earlier. Hold on, The Operator points to something on the floor, it is a turtle, a large one sitting in a sun patch on the floor, its wrinkly neck fully extended catching the rays, like Nona, it too ignores us, turns around and laboriously starts to move away.
After 10 weird minutes a man bustles into the room, his name is Hector, he speaks a little English and this is his house. He shows us to our room, Rosie is a bit disappointed…it is a little austere and a little reminiscent of a jail cell, but the bathroom is huge, the shower is amazing and like the Operator pointed out, the room is nice and cool being in the middle of the house as it gets no sun.
A wild garden courtyard borders our room and Hector has various parrots and birds in cages. We hand over our passports for the official registration and take a peek around the house. It is beautifully and simply decorated in a style that has now come back into retro fashion. Beautiful plates hang on the walls and antique furniture from the turn of the century which are so common in the majority of the houses here is everywhere.
We don’t got a key for the front door, ‘just ring the bell’ said Hector, we will let you in…Rosie was awakened in the night by the sound of the doorbell chiming a polite ding ding at 12.30am….5 mins later it went again….ding, ding, ding,ding ding ding…somebody was out late having too many rumsies……it definitely took Nona a while to get out of bed to the door for this entry, Rosie, or the Turtle could have opened the door quicker.
Hector organises a car to take us to our final stop in our Cuban Oddessey and confirms if we want breakfast, yes please 7.30. Just coffee with milk and sugar and some toasted bread with butter and marmalade…otherwise we will be served the generic Cuban breakfast of fresh fruit piled high, fruit juice, coffee, bread, butter, marmalde, various biscuits, then offered eggs…how do you want them cooked, omelette seems to be prefered by the casas (just omelette style, no filling though) boiled or fried….this is way to much for Rosie and The Operator who only really have a light start to the day.
All of the casa owners look a little taken aback that we only want so little and normally come back to check that we dont want eggs…me thinks everyone has eggs in abundance in Cuba, one of the only things. As for being specific about marmalade, Rosie found out after her first breakfast when the casa owner specified what we wanted and suggested marmalade for the toast, Rosie had nodded, she would have preferred jam but if thats all they had, all good. Well, the next morning we got the most amazing fresh guava jam, pure fruit pulped and muelied me think…it was thickish but not jelly like and certainly not laden with sugar and additives, it was absolutely delicious. The Spanish word for jam, Rosie found out, is…marmalade.
This is the only Casa where our wishes have been lost in translation or not remembered….we wasted so much of that breakfast pictured above, it was embarrassing….then again the table next to us did as well, you think a buffet would be more appropriate to minimize wastage in a country where nothing is plentiful….somehow though, Rosie thinks none of it was wasted, I am sure the uneaten fruit would have been blitzed into juice for the next day. The homemade fruit juice here in Cuba is out of this world and the coffee is brilliant.
We are off to our final destination in Cuba, Camaguey. A town built like a labyrinth to deter pirates back in the day with its confusing street layout. Come with us, let us show you around tomorrow.
