Day 5: To Santiago de Cuba

After a 4:30 am ride to the airport, we boarded an airbus and things were moving along well until we tried to land at S. de Cuba. Some say it's the most dangerous airport in the world (lies between two mountain ranges), but the main problem was weather, a nasty front with a lot of rain and wind, that forced the pilot to pull up as we were heading in. We diverted to Holguin, where we sat in the terminal for three hours. We then made a second attempt, which was successful.


However, it was still raining, and that was a problem. We were told that because it very seldom rains here, when it does, it freaks folks out, and everything shuts down, and that was what we found. We checked into our Casa Particular, Las Terrazas, chosen for its roof-top terrace, which was soaked by the rain.

We started a walking tour, only to discover how complete the shutdown was. We managed to find a recommended restaurant, which was closed, but which opened just for us after we knocked on the locked door, and we had an excellent coconut sauce fish filet there.

We found nothing else open tho, and when D came down with a headache we returned to our place, where I worked on the blog while D recovered. A bit later we went out to find a restaurant, and tho things were closed, a tout on the street (they're everywhere) took us to a little roof top place, where we had spaghetti and listened to a troubadour for about an hour.

Although the audio on the cell video I did of him did not record, it was
a pleasant ending to a challenging day.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Santiago de Cuba