Santiago de Cuba (March 16)

I concluded yesterday's post with "...dinner in the hotel, some internet connect time to check e-mail, then off to bed."  

Our dinner was generally good other than slices of what was called beef that were most definitely chewy.  I'm not sure hide is actually considered meat.

This was the first time in several days that we had internet access.  It took a while to download e-mail and respond to a critical few.  Pam finished before I did, going back to our room and to bed.  

When I entered our room, I wondered why she had left a radio on, turned up high on an 'energetic' station.  Realizing it was not emanating from within our room, my next thought was that it was strange that the hotel was holding such a noisy event so late and on a Sunday night.  Wrong again.  The music was coming from an event over 1/4 mile away; an event that went on until nearly 11:30.  Until then, sleep was elusive, probably trying to hide from the noise.

Hotel Melia Santiago de Cuba

Today our first stop was an art school named after Cuban painter José Joaquín Tejada.  We visited several classrooms and saw some talented artists.

 

  

 

Can you guess what some of us named this one?

Our next stop was Ballet Folklórico Cutumba - oh good - another dance studio with accompanying dance 'opportunity'.  Conga is tricky to dance to because moves are made on the off-beat rather than with the beat.  Okay, I will confess the lesson was fun.  And the dancers very good. 

 

 

 

The bus transported us to a marina where we boarded the good ship MARLIN that took us to Restaurante El Cayo on Granma Island in the middle of the harbor.  For those who recall the TV show Gilligan's Island, the vessel was reminiscent of the S.S.MINNOW.  (For better or worse, I did not have to look up the name of this TV series boat.) 

Our voyage was short and uninteresting, We ate on a porch overlooking relatively little activity in the harbor.  The meal was good, but nothing special. We boarded the boat again and, unlike the MINNOW, we completed the tour in (less than) three hours.

Morro Castle:  we will be there tomorrow

The centerpiece of the afternoon's agenda was a visit to a polyclinic - a medical clinic that treats a wide range of conditions.  The driver and guide having never been to the clinic before resulted in getting lost, necessitating our driver seeking directions.   

Eventually we arrived at Policlínico José Martí, disembarked and queued up inside a shabby facility.  Was it an omen that the accent mark over an "i" in Policlínico was missing and the "e" in José had the accent mark wrong?   Maybe, because after some waiting, it turned out no one was expecting us because we were at the wrong polyclinic.  After another iteration of the driver asking directions and a woman actually getting on the bus to show the driver the way, we arrived at the correct one.  This was Policlínico Docente Frank País Garcia. 

It was an interesting visit, but my takeaway was the difference in the appearance of the two clinics. The shabbiness of the first clinic, in what appeared to be a rundown part of the city contrasted noticeably with the appearance of the one located in a more attractive part of the city.  Having been repeatedly told Cuba pivots on equality, the inequality was pronounced.  The fact that we were supposed to see only the better one suggested an awareness of the inequality.  

[Some online browsing suggests that opinions of Cuba's healthcare system span the full spectrum.  I am not going to put an oar in the water on the subject beyond the observation made in the previous paragraph.  For those interested in delving deeper into the subject, I found the Wikipedia's article "Health care in Cuba" informative, so it might be a good starting point.]

Our final destination on today's tour was the impressive Plaza de la Revolucion that featured a statue honoring Antonio Maceo (aka José Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales).

We had dinner this evening at Zunzún, after which some of the group headed off to hear jazz while we and the remainder of the group returned to the hotel, tomorrow promising to be a long day inclusive of a 5-6 hour bus trip to Baracoa.  Thankfully there was no repeat of last night's musical extravaganza.