The Cactus Trip Diaries

Today’s plan was to complete our search for Melocacti along the south coast of El Oriente, the stretch between Santiago de Cuba as far east as we would be allowed to go towards the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. For map aficionados, this is illustrated in Map 11 – page 106 in the ‘Melocacti of Cuba’ book. For those without this book it’s a stretch of coastal road between Siboney and Sigua, possibly as far as Hatibonico from where M. harlowii ‘evae’ is reported. You may remember that last Wednesday (10th) we were stopped from seeing this plant.

As it was the farthest point of today’s itinerary, we decided to go there first. The weather had become overcast, after a beautiful start that allowed us to take some pictures around the hotel, El Balcon de Caribe, offering spectacular views over the Caribbean Sea. By driving towards Hatibonico we hoped that the sun would break through by the time that we’d see plants. It did not.

About 20 km before Hatibonico, a barrier across the road and armed officers sitting in the shade by it provided a reasonable indication of what would happen next. Despite this, I took along the Melo book and had a chat, explaining that we had travelled a long way to see these plants that were now very well protected. They smiled and said sorry, but firmly stated that this would not be possible for security reasons.

The clouds seemed to have settled in for the day and a steady drizzle fell as we drove back towards Santiago. We made a stop S1710 when things had dried up a bit, but there were no Melos to be found on the rocks.  I photographed some Consolea sp (are they just very variable or are we seeing different species?) and Stenocereus fimbriatus. These large plants had suffered a bit from recent storms and, from memory, the ‘wood’ of the dead branches looked more like ‘tree wood’ than the ‘usual cactus wood’. Something else to look into when I get home.

S1711 was at a gate marked ‘Cactus Garden‘, the ‘Jardin de Cactus’ at Siboney, where Nigel Taylor photographed Nopalea auberi in 2005 (NCL, 487.2) as I discovered later. Too good to miss. We walked around the landscaped garden, taking pictures of the many plants, but there was not a soul to be seen. Just as we were preparing to leave, the owner and his family returned. We were very welcome to look around and he was pleased to speak to people who knew about the plants.

He also had a small nursery behind the house, where he was growing Melocactus from seed and had Mammillaria prolifera ssp hatiensis, a Cuban endemic that so far had escaped us, although not for lack of trying to find it.

The light was not good, so we decided to go back to the hotel, where they were preparing for the Valentine Day’s disco. We were probably the only non Cubans in the hotel, and decided to leave them to feast, while I showed Mike & Cliff the draft of my Brazil talk. We decided to stay another night at the hotel, which is comfortable, reasonably priced, in an idyllic location and had internet – although its use is not cheap.

It was Saturday, so it rained – at least that seemed to be the case last Saturday as well. To be more correct, it had rained overnight in Baracoa, but was dry when we approached the car, laden with our luggage. Just as well, as a car park attendant (who had also washed our car overnight) pointed out that we had a flat tyre (left front). While Cliff went to work to change the tyre, Michael, seemingly recovered from his stomach upset, but still taking things easy, supervised, while I went to find out what a tyre repair service is called in Cuban. The word ‘Ponchero’ has been added to my vocabulary – amazing how this function is called by so many different names in the various Spanish speaking countries where we have used their services. This man seemed to do a roaring trade fixing bicycle tyres but his eyes lit up when we brought him a car tyre to fix. The damage to our pockets was CUC$ 10. I dare say that a Cuban would have paid a fraction of what we paid, but then again, we could not have a tyre fixed for under GBP in the UK, so everyone was happy. And the service was prompt and included replacing the original spare wheel with the one with the fixed tyre.

And so, we again made the journey through the hills, this time from the north side of the island to the southern coast. This time it rained, so that the pictures that I had promised myself on the two occasions when we made the journey in the opposite direction, were far fewer than I had anticipated.

Once along the coast road, we managed to cruise at around 100 km.p.hr. until I suggested a leg stretch if a cactus photo opportunity should arise. And so, again along the coast road, right along the Caribbean Sea  we made stop S1707. Nice plants in photogenic situations added some more nice pictures to our ever growing collection, but there were no new taxa to add to our list. The Melocactus was again a form of M. harlowii and, once I have plotted the GPS coordinates from my pictures to Google Earth, I will know which form they have been attributed to, by their geographic position. Mammillaria prolifera ssp haitensis that has been reported to grow all along the south east coast had once again escaped us. It seems that it is only prolific by name, not by number occurring here.

We made another attempt a little farther along, S1708, but no change in cactus flora.

The last stop today, S1709, was for a much darker green and almost spineless Nopalea sp. growing just at the edge of a small forest. Although the plant was full of flowers, we could not get close enough for close up pics, so these produced later from cropped images taken at the max 200 mm end of my zoom lens.

That was it for today as far as cactus pictures are concerned. We passed by Guantanamo, now that the novelty had worn off, and headed straight for Santiago de Cuba where tomorrow we still have a bit of south coast to explore for more forms of M. harlowii and may be a chance to reach the locality of M. harlowii ‘evae’ by approaching it from the west rather than from the Guantanamo Bay side.

Tonight’s hotel claims to have internet access, so we’ll try to send off a few Diary reports and emails.

Hooray!!! It seems to have worked!!!

Today started around 7:10 with a light earth quake, or perhaps tremour would be a better description.

Mike’s stomach was having an off day, so after breakfast it was just Cliff & I who set off to find the way from the north to Punta de Maisi which is about as far east as you can go on Cuba. It is also about as far north as the populations of M. harlowii get, again hugging the coast line and the coral limestone.

Maps seemed a bit vague as to whether there was a road/ track between Baracoa and Punta de Maisi. There was a large sign on the road into Baracoa to mark the turn off to Punta de Maisi. The asphalt topped road seemed to justify its place on any map of the area, but petered out before too long into a dirt track with ‘guess-where-now’ turnings. For the next two hours we zig-zagged along good dirt tracks through densely forested hillsides. This area was still well populated with people walking along the track and we came across the occasional (1940s?) Willys jeep loaded with about a dozen people. A few times we asked confirmation that we were on the right track and indeed we were.

We made a stop (S1704) for a Rhipsalis hanging from one of the many Tillandsia covered trees.

Eventually we were surprised to hit a reasonably main asphalt road. It seemed that we had hit the southern coast road that, although not shown on the map, runs as far as Maisi. The elderly lady, waiting at the bus stop when we asked her for directions, assumed that her reward was a free lift – and why not. When we dropped her off in the village, she told us to turn right at the next junction to get to the lighthouse at the Punta.

I remembered the Spanish for lighthouse, ‘faro’ from our visit to Chile last year, where a rare subspecies of Eriosyce grows near a lighthouse, and the sign pointing to it at a fork in the road therefore made sense. Once there, we could see the cacti from the car (S1705).

Again, Stenocereus fimbriatus (s.n. Ritterocereus hystrix) and Pilosocereus brooksianus were ever present, also used in fences all along the southern coast and Opuntia stricta (s.n. O. dilleni) was here as well. The coral limestone rocks were covered by a very thick version of the ‘shrub-with-glochids’, only some 5 cm tall and easily used as carpet, with the ‘glochids’ becoming attached as you tried to lay on the ground to take a low angle view of the Melocactus growing between them.

This was again M. harlowii ‘accunae’. No fruits were found to confirm the colour of the berries but the flower colour – pink – was as expected.

We made one more stop (S1706) before Punta Caleta, as the road dropped from the hills down to the Caribbean shore. There, on the roadside cutting all the cacti seen already, put in another appearance.

At Cajobabo we turned north, now back on the road to Bacarao that we took through the mountains yesterday. We’ll be coming down this route again tomorrow, as, having reached the farthest point east on the island, there is only one way to go: back.

We made no tight, rigid travel schedule for this trip as information was a little vague. We made it a priority to head for the densest and most varied cactus populations in the arid south east first and found it easier than expected. We have now seen these and only used up 10 days of our 28 day time budget, so there is plenty of time to look up some of the small and more remote cactus spots reported in the ‘Melocactus of Cuba’ book and to visit some places better known for their bird life, one of Mike’s other passions, rather than for their cacti.

It seemed that not all the guests had made it through to breakfast. All the elderly men had, but few of the girls had lasted to this feast consisting of a ham roll and a cup of coffee. Clearly, breakfast had not been the reason for their visit.

Today’s adventures would take us to the far south coast of Cuba, from Guantanamo, via Tortuguilla, Baitiquiri San Antonio del Sur, Macambo, Imais and Cajobabo, before turning north, away from the coast to Baracoa. If you are following these Diaries with the excellent book, ‘The Melocacti of Cuba’ by Rigerszki, Delanoy, Ujreti and Vilardebo (Cactus & Co.,2007)  you can follow this journey on Map 10 on page 72. According to this map we should have seen various forms of Melocactus harlowii, some of which have been given specific names, others just forma names before all being lumped together in the New Cactus Lexicon – a view that is not disputed by the authors in this Melocactus book. For me, all the plants we saw were M. harlowii, followed by any other name (species, variety, forma etc) in ‘quotes’. Each Stop Number is for a group of Melocacti that goes by such a splitters’ ‘name’, perhaps best regarded as a population name, although it is best to regard this as one continuous population (with some small breaks if you make your observations just by following the road) .

So:
S1699 was near Tortuguilla for M. harlowii ‘borhidii’
S1700 was for M. harlowii at around its lectotype area
S1701 was for M. harlowii ‘candicans’ with white fruits (2 found plus one with a pinkish flush)
S1702 was for M. harlowii ‘acunae’, west of Cajobabo
S1703 was for M. harlowii ‘acunae ssp. lagunaensis’ north of Cajobabo, as the road starts to twist its way up into the mountains. 

The book has a table on page 142 that sets out the differences between the various names.

Stenocereus fimbriatus (s.n. Ritterocereus hystrix) and Pilosocereus brooksianus are ever present, also used in fences all along the southern coast; Consolea / Nopalea sp. is found here and there as is Opuntia stricta (s.n. O. dillleni).

Yesterday’s Diary page had spilled over to today’s point of hitting the road.

Finding the excellent (for a few km anyway) Freeway out of town was easy. Finding the road to Guantanamo was easy. But, as we drove through a small town, the light traffic suddenly grounded to a halt. What was going on? Workmen were painting some road markings on the tarmac and a policeman was there to ensure that nobody drove over the wet paint. To make the point, a commandeered a large truck to act as road block. Some thirty minutes later we were on our way again. Never a dull moment!

We had been admiring large trees heaving under the weight of epiphytic plants since we had left Havana. We used a large stand of such trees as an excuse for a leg stretch (S1698) and photographed Tillandsia sp. (plural?), Rhipsalis sp. and Selenicereus pteranthus (?)

Just as we were feeling pleased at the progress that we were making, we passed about a dozen cars that had pulled off the road. The people had gotten out and seemed to wave us down.

A couple of km along there were more cars pulled over, this time with the official arm of the law waving everybody down. We pulled over behind a car with French tourists. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked in my best schoolboy’s Frenglish. ‘No idea!’

Nobody seemed to have an idea, but sat around patiently waiting. Then a cheer, as a car appeared from where we were hoping to go. It drove past at speed and no one moved. Some five minutes later another car approached. Again a cheer, the car passed, but no one made an effort to move. And again, and again, but now more frequently. Then the mystery was solved. The Tour de Cuba cycle race passed by us at full speed. All except  one hapless cyclist who must have over exerted himself, got off his bike and was sick right in front of us, before disappearing into an ambulance. We waited until no more cyclists and cars appeared and finally everybody got into their cars and started to set off. But only for some 10 m. as the officer of the law decided to exercise his authority. ‘You will move when I say you can, not before!’ he seemed to say to the car that had set us all in motion. Suitably told off, the driver hung his head in shame before we could all continue our journey. We had lost at least another hour. Never a dull moment!

Around 13:00 hrs we arrived in Guantanamo. The plan, after yesterday’s problems, was to find a hotel first, book ourselves in, then head to the coast, where just before Hatibonico we should find Melocactus harlowii ‘evae’. Nice of Mr Nagy to name the plant after his wife using her first name, rather than her maiden name of Visnyovszky, that would have caused UK speakers a lot more trouble. The road took us to some 10 km from the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The road seemed to make some unusual twists and turns but checking with local people walking along the road or waiting at bus stops confirmed that we were on the right road.

Until we hit one of the many control points. Since Havana we had seen them, but they had never been manned, or all cars had been waived by. All rental cars seem to have ‘T’ (Tourist) number plates so were easily recognised. The guys here must have been bored, or perhaps it was our rental car that attracted attention, in between the trucks and people on horseback or on foot. We had to stop and a soldier disappeared with our passports, visas, hotel room tickets etc into the office building. As well as the military there were a number of attractive young ladies looking over their shoulder. Their sisters? Girlfriends? Who knows. We waited patiently. Answered questions such as ‘Where are you from?’ aimed at me, as ‘The Netherlands’ in my passport did not seem to ring any bells. ‘Holanda!’ ‘Ah, OK.’

Another hour in the burning sun with the car’s thermometer suggesting 30 C. Loud radio calls crackled to and from HQ, names were spelled out, we showed them the maps and pictures in the Melocacti of Cuba book, which reports that Werner van Heek had visited these plants in 1993. Lucky Werner! In 2010 we were not going to see them, as finally word came from HQ that we could not go on. Once again, bureaucracy had prevented us from seeing and photographing a plant in nature. The guard seemed genuinely sorry for us, as we had been model ‘detainees’ and his boss seemed to have pleaded our case to the faceless man at HQ. Never a dull moment!

And so we returned to Hotel Guantanamo for a rest and dinner, where we were surprised at the large number of apparently single elderly European men accompanied by very pretty late teens / early twenties Latino ladies in revealing party dresses. We began to understand why this hotel had not been listed in our tourist guide. Never a dull moment!!!

OK, so the hot water did not work for our morning shower, but we had an emergency car that worked (although it was a tight squeeze for Cliff, who has a longer body than I have and therefore needed the extra head room in the Peugeot Partner. ‘I thought that Paul would need the extra head room!’ I hear you mumble, for quite a different reason.

We started passing limestone hillsides almost as soon as we left Punta de Piedra, classic habitat conditions for Melocactus harlowii. Some 15 minutes after leaving our hotel we made our first stop, S1695. M. nagyi, one of many synonyms of M. harlowii is reported from here. It seemed to be disused a quarry that had once supplied material for road building. I suggested that we’d take a look on what was on the other (south) side of the hill. We soon started seeing Melocactus, uprooted (by a recent hurricane?) lying with their roots exposed on the gravel and rocks. Mike and I replanted one or two but there were too many potential patients for our casualty ward, so we concentrated on taking pictures.

Once at the top of the hill we had a stunning view up and down the coast line, overlooking the Caribbean Sea. Great opportunities for pictures of cacti with the sea as background that I try to snap when ever the opportunity arises. Other cacti included Pilosocereus brooksianus, Stenocereus fimbriatus (s.n. Rittercereus hystrix), Cnidoscolus sp., Harrisia gracilis (?), Selenicereus pteranthus and  an Unidentified green shrub with small glochid-like ‘spines’ along the bottom of the leaves that caused just as much irritation as walking through a patch of Opuntia microdasys. Nasty!

On the other side of the road was an impressive stand of Royal Palms (Roystonia regia) to which we had been introduced in the Havana Botanical Garden.

Eight minutes later we could not resist another stop, S1696, as the road turned round a rocky outcrop covered in Agave anomala (?). We now had the sea immediately to the right (South)  of the road and steep cliffs rising some 30 meters high to our left. M. harlowii ‘ nagyi’ was still around, showing us how variable it can be in body and cephalium size and epidermal colour. At this rate, we would not reach Santiago de Cuba for the next few days! So we exercised a rarely seen amount of self discipline and included some very brief stops for scenery and plants under S1697. 

Initially the Melocactus was our fairly constant companion, accompanied by Leptocereus sp? and later by Consolea or Nopalea sp. There were Melocactus of all ages, from young seedlings to plants dying of old age. Many of the older plants had a yellowish chloritic look about them. May be their limestone habitat was blocking some nutrients used to produce chlorophyll, or perhaps the cephalium development had reduced / stopped the plant’s ability to replace chlorophyll as it aged.

Time was ticking on and we again forced ourselves to have longer stretches of driving between stops, as there was still a long way to go to Santiago de Cuba, where we needed to ex-change our emergency stand-by car for a better solution.

Santiago de Cuba is the second largest town on the island and was buzzing with rush hour traffic as we entered the city. So where was the car rental garage? Asking directions proved that our Spanish in this respect had improved to the point that we’d receive a salvo of words and sentences that were completely unintelligible to us, like machine gun fire. A Rastafarian gentleman (called Hylie of course) knew exactly where the garage was and had joined us on the back seat of the car almost before we had the chance to invite him in. He was quite pushy in advertising his Cassa particular (private bed & breakfast accommodation). We told him that we’d be ages, filling out paperwork and that we had already had booked into the 5 star Hotel Santiago (we had not – it would have been far outside our budget!). And so we exchanged our Peugeot 206 for a much more recent (only 38,___ km on the clock!) and larger Peugeot. That would do nicely except that it was due to have a service after 500 km and before 800 km had been added. We agreed that we would come back this way from Baracoa, about as far east as we could go.

It seems that this car had also been in the wars and was probably an insurance write off in the Netherlands as the original dealer’s advertising slogan, in Dutch, was still pasted on the rear window. But in a country where a car’s age is measured in decades rather than years and only the tough survive, we were glad to have an acceptable set of wheels.

Next we needed a hotel. We tried several large hotels but in each case were told that they were full up. We later learned that a cycle race (Tour de Cuba?) was due in town. Having been disappointed again in our search, the security guard, Andy, at the last hotel that we knew of, slipped us an address card and suggested that he’d meet us in 15 minutes time when his shift finished and he would take us to his home that was a cassa particular. A little risky, but we had run out of options.

It was a great experience to take a look inside one of these ‘not-so-new-on-the-outside’ houses. Very nice and comfortable, if a little dated and lacking in some of the many comforts found in European homes.  A very attractive price reflected the basic nature of the accommodation but we were a little concerned on arrival that Mike and I would have to share the matrimonial double bed. Still, worse things happen at sea and it would only be for one night. But where was Cliff going to sleep? This was going to be arranged. And where could we go and have a bite to eat? They would take us to a typical Cuban restaurant at eight. Excellent.

We settled in while waiting for dinner time to arrive. Andy explained that the place he was taking us was for Cubans, not tourists, so that we would need to pay in Cuban pesos that strictly speaking was only available to Cubans. Tourists could change their currency from Euros or GBP into CUC$, tourist only money. There are c. 24 peso to the CUC$. Andy offered to change some GBP 10 in CUC$ into Cuban Pesos. Excellent. Everything seemed to go very well. Then it turned out that we were taking Andy, his brother and their wives out to dinner. I was feeling quite wealthy with some 400 Cuban pesos in my pocket, but these soon started disappearing as we had to pay 15 pesos admission each to get into the restaurant, to cover the cabaret that would start later. Fortunately I got this money back even before we had sat down as the bouncer pointed out that Cliff and Mike, in shorts, were not suitably dressed. Andy’s wife thought that it was a ploy to get more money out of us, as our attempt to blend in with the locals had obviously misfired.

Never mind, on to the next restaurant, where admission was only 10 pesos each. Each time, Andy would tell me the cost of the next step, I’d hand him the money and he, as Cuban, would pay the staff. The 400 pesos had gone by the time that we left. We had eaten enough, chicken with rice, a tomato salad, chips and a can of Crystal beer each, for seven people, all for about GBP 10. As it was not  possible for all seven of us to fit in the car, Andy and his wife took a bus home. 2 CUC$ please. It became clear Andy’s home was no longer an officially registered cassa particular. His wife had had some health problems and no longer wanted the continuous knock on the door from tourists, some looking for a cheap place to bring their recent (5 minutes earlier) Cuban girlfriends to. Understandably.

As a result, we could not park our rental car in front of the house, as this would attract attention from officials policing such matters. Instead we needed to park in a nearby side street where friends would keep an eye on the car. Two more CUC$ please.

Where was Cliff going to sleep? At Andy’s sister-in-law’s house across the road. The room there turned out to be a lot more spacious than our room at Andy’s; large enough to add an extra single bed, so that new arrangements saw Mike and I taking the room with two beds here, while Cliff took the room at Andy’s. Another 25 CUC$ please.

The agreed price had included breakfast, but when an excellent cooked breakfast had been enjoyed came the request for another CUC$ 3 each. We had reached the point of ‘enough is enough’ – the European milk-cow was dry.

I know that Alain Buffel had a much more positive experience with Cassa Particulares during his stay a few years ago. Perhaps, with time, things had changed? Perhaps our experience is not typical? In any event, we had enjoyed a night in clean accommodation where we had felt safe. We had been fed and watered and by the end of the adventure we had paid in total roughly what we would have paid for a triple room, dinner and drinks in a hotel. We had seen a Cuban home and family life for real. No harm was done. However, I’d rather spend the money in future in a hotel where the sign at Reception and the menu in the restaurant tell me how much we’ll spend. Cassa Particulares might still be considered when hotel options run out.

On Wednesday we’ll go Guantanamo!

The coral limestone around Cabo Cruz had looked promising yesterday, so we returned, but this time had to pay the CUC$ 5 per person admission to the Parque Nacional Desembarco del Granma. When we drove past here yesterday, it was late and everybody had gone home. There was a nature trail and archaeological site (El Guafe) with guides to accompany us on the two hour walk (S1694) all included in the admission fee. Fortunately our Spanish has improved enough to beat our guide’s knowledge of English, which was nothing.

We told her that our main interests were cacti and that Mike was also a keen bird spotter. While she was quite good on the birds, her knowledge of the cacti was less impressive, but at least she could recognise plants in the family and point them out, leaving us to murmur a genus name followed by ‘sp.’, but not at all sure of their precise identity – although we did find some plants that had been labelled by a touring botanists, including a Selenicereus boeckmannii (now a synonym of S. pteranthus). I think that we were on safe grounds with our ID of a gigantic Dendrocereus nudiflorus, with roots sprawling out along the ground for several meters and with Pilosocereus brooksianus that here was a forest dweller growing in the dense vegetation. Of the non-cactoids, we saw a tree that looked like a Ceiba and a Ficus (strangling other trees). We also saw quite a few ‘curly tailed lizards’ Quite a curious tail, was it trying to imitate a scorpion? Or was the waving tail meant to fool would be predators, inviting them to attack the moving parts while the important head and body remained absolutely still?

Very satisfied with our morning’s exploits, we drove to the end of Cabo Cruz and found a snack bar to have a tin of lemonade – honest. Then it was back to Niquero and on to Pilón. East of Pilón we should find a coral limestone terraces full of Melocactus nagyi but alas our car did not get us that far.

The plan had been to find rooms in Pilón. On arrival we learned that there was no hotel in town, but there were some holiday complexes 18 km east of town, along the Caribbean coast.

We had passed one when I spotted the sign to a Cactus Garden. Too good an opportunity to miss!. Chance to see all the local plants (and more?) with suggested names and may be a knowledgeable person to point us in the right direction for spotting them in their natural habitats. There was no one there. As Cliff reversed the car, the gearbox finally gave out.  It had been a ‘very loose’ gearbox right from the start, as was to be expected for the age of the car. Now however, it seemed that the gear stick had jumped out of its gate so that the car was permanently stuck in third gear (or was it second?). We managed to push the car round so that we were facing the road and then, by slipping the clutch, managed to drive it along the main road in the direction of the hotels.

Reception at the first one looked down their nose at us, dressed in our field clothes. A similar story at the second hotel was almost similar – these places were used for block bookings by large travel firms. They had a double and a single at around US$ 218. We were not that desperate. We explained our dilemma to the lady at reception who took pity on us and suggested to go back past the Cactus Garden at the hotel we had passed earlier. They used to belong to the same group as the larger hotels, but in these hard days of financial recession had been cast off and were glad of the business – nice cabaña plus breakfast for CUC$ 48.

They also helped us to ring the car rental firm who immediately agreed to send a replacement car on its way. That car arrived at around 21:45 having driven some 168 km from the nearest depot. By the light of Cliff’s torch the mechanic discovered that the gearshift linkage between the gear stick and the gear box had become disconnected and had been ‘fixed’ before with a piece of wire that had now become undone. We were given a Peugeot 206 with 117,093 km on the clock – well run in, but only as a stop gap emergency until we arrive in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second largest town, where we will change this car for a ‘proper’ replacement. Closing mileage on our Partner was 114,940.

Anyone coming to Cuba would be naive to think that it is possible to pick up an almost new rental car. It was reassuring that when something goes wrong, it is put right quickly and without fuss. It is perhaps worrying that a car can be handed over to a customer for a 25 day rental period with such defects and that is something that we’ll be discussing in more detail with the people at the desk on our return in Havana after we have enjoyed the remainder of our holiday.

At least tomorrow we are in the right place for a bit of cactus exploration between the hotel and Santiago.

We woke up to a nice bright sunny morning – what a difference a day makes!

We had vague plans to make this another driving day, but I realised that again I was not best prepared and that we ran the risk of passing by interesting cactus populations without realising it. I therefore moved to the back seat while Cliff carried on as driver with Mike navigating. I made use of my ‘rest day’ by scan reading the ‘Melocacti of Cuba’ book. My worst fears were confirmed, we had passed two habitat locations of different species of Melocactus already. But not to worry – we could not have stopped for good photographs in the rain and we would be passing by here on the way back anyway, so we will take a look then.

We quickly reached the town of Las Tunas, where a large round-about had a nice coffee stop lay-by plus a large image of Che Guevara supervising the proceedings. (S1691). Always on the look out for a photo opportunity I spotted a large pile of what looked from a distance like Opuntia. When I got closer, it actually turned out to be Nopalea, N. cochenillifera (Not Consolea macracantha as reported earlier)  and an Euphorbia sp. growing intertwined with each other. As luck would have it, the Consolea was in bud, flower and fruit, demonstrating their floral adaptation to hummingbird pollination. As Cliff and Mike were making up their minds if the flowers were worth getting their cameras out of the car for, a humming bird started feeding on the nectar of the Nopalea flowers. I was the one with the camera and within seconds had added another half a dozen images of a hummer feeding on cactus flower nectar. Excellent.  Cliff and Mike came back with their cameras, but as the bird did not re-appear, they decided to do some car repairs – fixing the fuse of the cigarette lighter that stopped Mike from charging his mobile phone and Cliff from charging his camera batteries. While they were playing car mechanics, the hummer briefly returned, but I guess the breeze was getting too strong, so that a quick health & safety check indicated that the risk of being blown onto sharp spines was too great. Never mind – I have some great pictures (he says modestly). The other target for my camera was a small, bright green Anole lizard, Anolis sp. as identified by Mike. 

When we approached Bayamo, it was decision time. Should we go to Santiago de Cuba and make some trips from there, or head to the south west of El Oriente, to Manzanillo and then on to Niquero. We chose the latter. S1692 is for pictures taken along the way – primarily of one of the many Euphorbia hedges with ceroids poking their heads through and for another hedge made up of Bougainvillea in flower.

We found clean, comfortable and affordable accommodation at the Niquero Hotel, but it was still early, so after Cliff had ‘modified’ one of his electrical adapters, to allow him to use his camera battery charger from the air-conditioning socket, we went for a quick exploratory drive to the lighthouse at the end of the world at Cabo Cruz. This is the farthest point west of the southern Cuba ‘peninsula’. Detailed observations have been recorded from the coast line between Pilón and Santiago de Cuba, but the question remains if this trend continues another 20 km to the east to Cabo Cruz.

Things did not look too promising as human habitation and agriculture seemed to have pushed out natural vegetation. All of a sudden, a strange sight, a large cabin cruiser / boat on very large trailer had apparently been parked along the road and a metal open sided barn had been built around it to protect it. A quick investigation told us that we had found Granma, the boat on which Fidel, Che and their fellow combatants had sailed from Mexico to liberate Cuba. I had read that he had landed near Niquero, but had not expected to see the actual boat, apparently without security or signage, along the road. Later I learned that the boat was only a replica.

We completed the last few miles to Cabo Cruz and found that the substrate had turned to coral limestone, with dense natural vegetation growing on it. We will return tomorrow to take a closer look for Melocactus that could grow in clearings between the vegetation.

During dinner, we heard the sound of a Cuban band outside. Curious as ever, we took a look to find a small percussion based band accompanying the sounds of an old street organ with a range of tunes that included ‘Roll out the barrel’ I quickly fetched my camcorder and now have enough footage of live raw Cuban music, with people dancing in the street, to use as closing credits during my Cuba presentations in months to come.

Another great day where the unexpected far exceeded what we had hoped to achieve.

We had a nine o’clock appointment with a Peugeot Partner, so after packing and breakfast we started the paperwork circus. We had agreed to each pay CUC$300 in cash and the balance on our credit cards. Credit card payments incorporate a 11.14% tax.

The first impressions of the car are fine. It is certainly not new, with 113,872 km on the clock (first time round?) and the ‘service due’ light on. The next challenge was to find the way out of town. In Latin America this can be quite a challenge as you’ll know from previous Diary entries over the years. This time we had a map and instructions, missed the appropriate turn but followed the fairly scenic route around the bay and found the freeway, A1, without much delay.

We passed through quite green looking countryside, much of it developed for agriculture. The A1 here consists of 4 (!) lanes each way! Traffic was about as heavy as it was in the UK during the petrol strike, a few years ago. Near road junctions people are waiting along the road to hitch a lift, waving cash at drivers to persuade them to stop. Public transport is just not sufficient to meet demand, as demonstrated by the few busses that were chock-a-block. There were also a number of cattle trucks jammed full with people. It all looked a bit primitive, but when you think about it, it is no worse than the London Underground at rush hour – it’s just that there, the standing is in an enclosed carriage hidden from view in dark tunnels.

We decided to make a toilet call & leg stretch at a service station and as we were about to get back in the car, were approached by a couple of ladies who asked if we were going to Camagüey. Yes, we were. Could we give them a lift? We had enough space, so why not get into the Cuban Socialist spirit. It paid off, in that on a couple of occasions they could tell us which way to go at un-signposted crossings, and once in Camagüey, to point us at a safe and reasonably priced hotel.

Around 3 p.m., the rain started to come down. Soon afterwards, the vast A1 Freeway turned in a main 2 lane country road. At times the surface reminded us of roads in Bahia, Brazil, but in general, so far, they are in much better condition.

The rain taught us that a) the windscreen washer bottle of the car was either leaking or missing and b) that the windscreen wiper blade on the passenger side was not a Peugeot standard, about 2" shorter than it was meant to be and c) that its fitting was improvised, so that we had to stop a couple of times to put it back in place, with Cliff using a bit of brute force and ingenuity to make it stick.

All in all, we learned a lot about the island, stuff that you read in books, but don’t believe until you see it. The country side so far is flat – like Holland with palm trees. There is no point in looking for cacti here, except now that we arrived in Camagüey, where we saw some trees heaving with Tillandsias and, potentially, epiphytic cacti. We’ll check them out tomorrow or on the way back, if the sun is out and the light is better.

Today’s pictures are just a few shots from the car window to remind me of what we saw – A wide road, getting narrower as we went on, on a cloudy day that turned wet. No need for a stop number – they are just filed by date/time stamp.