Baracoa

The boys take the plunge


Baracoa is the oldest town in Cuba and many people say it is the most beautiful. They have actual relics from Christopher Colombus and it is the place where the very first uprising aginst the Spanish occurred. It is a very poor town and a very easy town to get around in. Albert, the official tour guide was most enthusiastic and tried hard to entertain us. We had dinner at his house and again the food was terrific.

The evening was spent in the most non-tourist bar that we could find and we had a great time talking to one of the locals. Cubans practise the art of conversation. They are both knowledgable, thoughtful, analytical and social. It is such a wonderful thing to have someone who moves a conversation along in a natural manner. It is such a lost art. One of the challenges that we have set ourselves is to try to find a boring Cuban. Perhaps the town drunk, but even he was entertaining as far as town drunks go.

We toured out of the town and walked up to the mountains, swam in crystal clear waters, and saw life off the tourist map. We managed to visit a cacao farm and a coffee plantation. Josh and Charles jumped 10 metres down a waterfall and lived to tell the tale. Our new friend, who we had met in the bar, showed us examples of the smallest species of frog in the world, it was smaller that a match head, about the size of an ant, absolutely beautiful.
This tiny spot in the guide's hand is the world's smallest frog

It was a true bush tucker day with our friend jumping up trees to get pomelos (grapefruit/orange cross), cacao fruit (velvety and sweet) and bananas. These weren't any bananas though, they were little sugar bananas that just blew the boys away. For lunch we were taken to someone's home and she made us Cuban hot chocolate with her own home grown chocolate and fried green bananas with salt (truely wonderful.)

Everyone has something to say about Cuba and life as it is unravelling and it is all interesting.