Day 12: Baracoa III

A bit of rain during the night, but by daybreak it was only cloudy, and we met with others at Cubatur for our day trip to Boca Yumuri. which the LP described as a "haunting natural gorge". To Oregonians who have done hikes in places like Oneanta Gorge, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, but we did a little hike up it for some nice scenes...









There is a dark side. The name, Yumuri, is a Taino word roughly meaning "refusal to work in slavery" that the local Taino men would shout when they jumped to their deaths from the cliffs in defiance of their conscription by the Spanish to work as slaves extracting gold from the river.

On the brighter side, we saw two very nice little blue herons in the river...


and D and some others had a little swim.

We also stopped at a natural arch, the Tunel de Los Alemanes (German Bridge), named for two Germans who discovered it and built a road through it and charged a toll to use it.



We also stopped at a small cacao farm and got a pretty good lesson in the private production of chocolate (in this case a member of a cooperative that has a contract with the government for 80% of its crop but can sell the rest privately), from the blossoms...



to the growing pods...






removing the pod shells...


roasting the beans...


and processing the various parts into products like cocoa butter, cocoa powder and piece and bar chocolate.

We were supposed to stop at a black sand beach on the way back, but it started raining, and so we made a group decision to bag that. We're hoping it will stop in time for our hike up El Yunque tomorrow.

A rather odd takeaway from the trip for me, I spent most of the ride to and from listening to a Danish guy telling me about Greenland politics (didn't know it had any.)
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Location:Baracoa