Cuba pt. IV - El Che and stucco-walled flamboyance...

location: Santa Clara, Villa Clara

Home to all the Che Guevara memorabilia any tourist could ever dream of, Santa Clara's subtle beauty easily gets overlooked. i personally thinks this is such a shame because the mix of architectural styles throughout this city is truely amazing and incredibly fascinating. our opinions on Santa Clara were thus very mixed. while Amy and Rachel didn't seem to take to this city at all and Ian was his usual diplomatic/easy-going traveller self and refrained from expressing strong opinions either for or against, i really liked how none of Santa Clara's true beauty was glaringly obvious (as it was in Trinidad). i liked that you could pass an old, dirty building that was falling apart and after pausing to look beyond that first impression, you would appreciate it just as much as the bright, colourful, renovated house right next to it. i don't know if this makes much sense to people but anyone who understands what i mean will surely recognise that quiet 'wow' feeling that certain things provoke inside you at the moments where you don't initially expect it.

Oddly, in typical french fashion, museums in Santa Clara are closed on mondays so instead of gracing Che with our presence at the Museo Memorial Ernesto Che Guevara on Plaza de la Revolucion, we opted for the cigar factory tour. And this is where the Lonely Planet actually managed to let us down! it's hard to believe, i know (we were shocked ourselves) but the Lonely Planet did not tell us anything about the tricky process of getting tickets for this tour. Patience was tested, we learned that no one gets to queue jump in Cuba (even though explaining the route to the other tour operator took longer than it would have taken to actually sell us the tickets) and the socialist government's control and regulation of the tourism industry became glaringly obvious.

i didn't really like the factory visit itself much - i felt like a spoiled rich westerner who without any second thoughts shelled out 1/3 of anyone in that factory's monthly wage on a 20min. tour and then hovered over the people trying to d a job where their pay is directly linked to the amount of cigars they turn out (and all their work is quality controlled - if a cigar is not of high enough standard, they don't get paid for it until they re-do it).

That afternoon, enthusiasm for exploring this new stop on our journey seemed completely drained so while the other 3 stayed at the casa, i went for a wander and then ended up sitting in a bar in Parque Vidal for a good 1½ hours. it was a really nice break because at this point i was a little sick of people's attitudes and what seemed to me as a refusal to give Santa Clara a chance, and while i don't claim to have been the picture of positivity on the entire trip (but let's face it, i'm not even that normally :) i was missing being surrounded by people who are open-minded to things in a similar way to how i am (and how i felt the people i met in india last year were).

The morning of the day we were leaving, we took a horse carriage to the Che memorial. The museum was really fascinating (i loved all the B/W photographs) and the statue looks exactly like it does on all the postcards.

Apart from being told off by a guard for sitting down on the steps of the monument, no revolutionary drama here... unlike the drama over how/when to set off from Santa Clara to Havana :S

i was quite happy to waste time until 22:00 when the Viazul bus would depart. Arriving in Havana in the middle of the night after 5 hours on a bus of course was not ideal but for the CUC$18 it cost, i would have been happy to. Our other option was getting a taxi which, according to the Lonely Planet, can get haggled down to CUC$50. We talked to one who said he'd drive us to Havana for CUC$60 which i also was happy enough to accept. he said he'd leave Santa Clara at 18:00 which did mean a late night arrival in Havana but once again, that was fine by me considering the price.

But it was the method of travel that we eventually took that showed how differently the 3 of us prioritise (Ian is too easy-going when it comes to these decisions so it would really be unfair to include him in this...). Money was, at this point, a concern for all of us but more so, it seemed, for Rachel and, to a lesser extent, Amy. However, they didn't want to hang about in Santa Clara but rather wanted to have the evening in Havana, which meant leaving Santa Clara at 13:00 and going with a friend of José's (he owned the casa that amy and ian were staying at). His price? CUC$90.

i had already voiced my opinion but in the end, the extra CUC$5-7 really weren't worth the argument with the girls and thus we set off on an extremely uncomfortable, extremely cold (damn airconditioning!) ride back to La Habana.

As a final note in this Santa Clara chapter, i have to just mention the casa me and rachel stayed at. Not only was she the nicest person i think we stayed with, her pork dinner and the fresh guava and mango juice she made us was amazing!!