The Cactus Trip Diaries

We were now a bit better organised and over breakfast reconfirmed our game plan.

First we established if we could book ourselves in for the last night of our stay in Cuba – no problem.

Secondly, we needed to rent a car. In the hotel foyer, the desk of the agency that had provided us with three quotes yesterday was empty, but another agent in this line up of advisors, tour organisers etc was free and so we asked for another quote. We were interested in his Peugeot Partner model, similar to the Citroen Berlingo that Cliff drives in England. His calculator started buzzing as he came up with a figure quite a bit lower than his colleague, for a car that we knew should suit us. No problem.

We quickly completed the necessary paper work while Mike was queuing at the bank around the corner. We discovered that the banks were not open during the weekend, and as we were off on our travels tomorrow, it seemed prudent to change a significant amount of our money now. While we could pay with credit cards, this incurred an 11.4% surcharge. we know have 24 hours to consider how much we each want to pay by card and how much in cash.

Next on to find a taxi to take us to the National Botanic Gardens – No problem.

This was about 17 km out of town. On arrival we learned that the gardens had an area of 600 hectares and therefore best seen by car. One of their staff would come with us and guide us around. Great!

We explained to Maria that we were Cactus Loco and that we had seen pictures on the internet of their nice collection of Cactaceae, including all the Cuban endemics. We’d like to see those. Her face dropped. She explained that the gardens were opened by Fidel Castro in 1984.  The greenhouse had been built with financial aid of East Germany and was opened in 1989. In 2005, hurricanes hit the Caribbean and  had broken lots of glass in the greenhouse, damaging many of the plants in the process. Work to clean up the damage was still in progress, but there was little or no money available to make this happen.

It was sad to see the damage. The structure is still sound and much of the broken glass had been cleared away, but not all. Why cover the plants in glass? Surely there is no need to protect them from the cold? We were correct, but the protection was from the intense sun and rain. I guess that shade cloth would provide a more cost effective solution to offer protection from the sun and that providing extra drainage might help to combat the rain. She smiled. The gardens were at their best when Fidel was at his peak. As Fidel became older and his health declined, the gardens went down hill too. Now they are almost dead. A sad but true observation. It is not only plants in nature that deserve our support and protection. Botanic gardens provide an excellent place of education. All images from the gardens are filed away as S1690.

We arrived back at the hotel around two o’clock with plenty to think about.

Our long journey was catching up with us and after a beer and burger we enjoyed a brief siesta.

Tomorrow we pick up our car around 9:00 and set off for Camagüey. From there we’ll head to Santiago de Cuba from where we plan to make a five day circuit around the Sierra Maestira, where along the coast road there are reports of many locations of Melocactus. Then we plan to head east to Guantanamo and Baracoa. As we then head back to Havana, we’ll spend a day or two around Holguin and Matanzas. Depending on how we get on, we might spend a few days to the west of Havana, were the beaches are nice, but the cacti are scarce. 

Our mission this trip, as usual, is to look for, photograph and record cacti in their natural habitat. 

All very well, but if you arrive in a new country for the first time, it would be impolite not to take a look at various tourist aspects as well. We also realised that we still had to map out a rough itinerary for the coming days, so sat around with maps and books and soon confirmed that the majority of cacti seem to be spread around the island, but that the more attractive ones are found in the South East of the island, not too far from that well known landmark – Guantanamo Bay.

Now better aware of where we wanted to go we had chats with a tourist rep, about the state of main roads (narrow but good), ease of booking accommodation in Cassa Particular along the road, at this time of the year and again were told, no problem. That just left transport to arrange so we made some enquiries about the possibilities of renting a car. Again, we were pleasantly surprised that this seemed to be quite straight forward with costs similar to anywhere else on the planet.

By now it was midday, so we set off for our touristic stroll, choosing to follow the circuit recommended in one our guide books. During the stroll I rediscovered how hot the sun is here, and that I’ll have to dig out my hat to protect my scalp at the first opportunity.

Before too long we passed a small bar where the waiter was extolling the virtues of its food and drinks, and as we were now passed midday, that seemed a good idea. So a light snack, a mojito (rum based cocktail) and bottle of beer each later, we continued our stroll.

Just before sunset we arrived back at the hotel – one of the advantages of staying in a 25 floor hotel is that you can see it from afar – at least when we were on the first half of our walk, we would catch glimpses of the hotel when we looked down the side streets. Not so on the way back, when we strayed a bit farther in-land and were walking through narrower streets. Eventually a friendly Cuban gentleman, spotting us looking at maps, came to our rescue and pointed us in the right direction. I still managed to snap some 180 images that reflect my first impressions of Havana, all filed away under S1689.

Tomorrow we plan to visit the Botanical Garden.