Flight to Cuba

Havana

To Pinar del Rio

Playa Giron

Trinidad

Camaguey

Santiago de Cuba

Holguin - Guardalavaca

Sancti Spiritus - Zaza

Corralillo - Elguea

Varadero

Havana Revisited

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Day 12 & 13 : Elguea & Corralillo.

Its not too far from Sancti Spiritus to Corralillo, but especially the last 40 kilometers or so I had the feeling we were headed into no mans land. Basically, the terrain is quite rough and looks uncultured, like a big swamp or something. We took some lady hitchhikers, who had been working in the fields apparently, judging from the collection of machetes & other big knifes they were wearing. I'd never taken anybody wearing such hardware in Europe, that's for sure! They asked us where we were going, and we told them: to Corralillo. They said : wow, that's still incredibly far away. (we had about 30 - 40 km to go from there: it gave us an impression of the size of the world these women live in). Anyway, all this is supposed to give you the right impression about Corralillo: it's a bit isolated.

Coming from the inland you descend to the coast, giving you a breathtaking view of Corralillo and the sea. In the town itself there's nothing much to do. Hotel Elguea is about 8 km from the town driving along a narrow road which is straight as a line.
The Hotel has a very nice attraction: Thermal baths. Hot water, smelling of sulfur and salt comes up out of a well near the Hotel. They've built a whole spa around it. There's two large basins that hold this hot water, one outside and one inside. It's supposed to be good for Arthritis and all kinds of skin problems. They were certainly very relaxing, if a bit smelly. You can have al sorts of treatments here, hydro-massages, have yourself wrapped with mud and blankets, hosed down with cold water, you name it.

We also went to the beach east of Corralillo, which was very nice. There was not a single tourist in sight, only Cuban families came there. The water is very shallow for at least 200 meters. We heard some of the Cubans joking: If only the water was this shallow all the way, I bet a lot of people would walk to Florida....ha ha ha. There was a sad undertone to this joke though.

We learnt some stuff on this beach.

First: you sit in the water, not in the sand. Second: You should drink small sips from a bottle of Rum (we did not bring any, but all the Cubans did!) Third: When you dig at the sand in the water, eventually you get to a layer of fine mud. You should put this mud on your face, on your legs, in your hair and anywhere else on your body and let it dry. When I imitated what I saw the Cubans doing I noticed that the mud had the same sulfuric smell as the water in the Hotel. This must be medicinal Mud then! Also, I felt a gentle prickling sensation on my skin after applying the Mud. It felt nice, and it gave us something to do. We spent about two hours in the water covering each other in mud. This was great fun, even without rum!

That evening we ate at the Hotel again (isolation, remember?). At one point an elder gentleman, accompanied by what looked like some bodyguards entered the restaurant. Sonia said to me: Hey, there come last years winner in the Fidel Castro Look-alike Contest! So I turned around and sure enough, he looked like Fidel. Then I noticed that the Hotel personnel was quite excited about the new guest. Each of the people working in the kitchen took turns to sneak a peak at him. Then came out the Canadian tourists and shook his hand: O Mr. Castro, it's such a great honour to meet you bla bla bla....So for half an hour we were sitting in this restaurant, in Hotel Elguea, thinking we are about three meters away from Fidel, a hero of the twentieth century. We were all nervous about it!

We decided to go out and have a drink at the lobby bar (by the way, if you ever go to elguea, bring some extra powerful anti-mosquito stuff: they ate us alive, no fooling, I had more than 30 bites per leg and the itch drove me crazy). Our Fidel look-alike also decided to go for a drink, body guards and all. Then he lit a Cigar. This instantly ruined my evening because I knew Fidel had given up tobacco. So we asked the bartender who the guy with the beard was. It turned out to be Fidel's brother Raul.....Important minister in the government and Cock fighting aficionado...I took a picture of him while I was still thinking he was Fidel (and the woman standing next to him too, I guess).(18/06/2003 Note: I just found out this is _not_ Raul, it's the oldest brother, Ramon Castro.