Tobacco Road

Friday 30th March 2007
We were going to do some horse riding in the countyside this morning (that seems to be the only mode of travel we haven’t tried yet!) but decided instead to walk along the track the horses use, into Vinales town. It was a lovely walk through the countryside – and the town itself was interesting in that it is true Cuba. Of course there are tourists but not many and so we could just see people going about their everyday lives. We also sussed out a restaurant for tonight that looked good, so we’ll see. Walked back along the main road, past all the tobacco fields and saw a man using a ski-like contraption pulled by two oxen to plough the field. I know all the the Caribbean is pretty much third world, but here it is third world with obstruction. We stopped at the local school on the way to distribute the 30 toothbrushes, crayons and coloured pencils we’d picked up along the way. All our Vietnam cyclists from Exodus had collected their toothbrushes at every hotel along the route (don’t know why Vietnam, another poor country puts toothbrushes in boxes in hotel bathrooms for their guests) so we could give them out in Cuba, along with the pencils and crayons they had brought from England. They seemed to go down well with the teacher and Sid is very happy not to be carrying them further round the world. We’re just going to laze around the pool for the afternoon now and I’ll try to post this early evening as I don’t think I’ll have internet access tomorrow. Will have to save to disc and transfer as there is just one very antiquated computer here and I can’t link my laptop. Bear in mind also that I have no CD rewriter built into my laptop and so have carried an external one, leads, transformers and all, around in my suitcase. No wonder I was stopped at Cuban immigration. Sometimes this blog feels like a lot of effort, but I won't give up now. Posting now. To top it all I've just had to post the last three entries on pages coming up with instructions in Spanish. We'll see if it works.