Cuba day 3 - Bay of Pigs and Cienfuegos

Today we are driving to Cienfuegos, but first we stop at the fort across the Havana bay.

A nice photo of Mike and Livan.

A closer view of the Christ figure we had seen across the bay.  The wife of a previous president wanted this statue - not sure who paid for it.  From across the bay it looks like Christ is blessing the city of Havana.  But if you look really closely - he is actually blessing the house of the previous president!

We then went to the House of the Bee Humming Birds.  The male has a red head and the female - blue.

Along the way - a termite nest surrounded by an airplant in a tree.

Next stop is an underground cave.  You have to dive to see the actual stalagtites and stalamites.

But what I really noticed were all the fossels.

The cave is straight down.

Some shots with the wide angle lens.

Can you see all the fossels on the ground?  It was difficult walking.  Don't know how the people who were barefoot were managing it.

 At the restuaurant we saw the Cuban Doves.

We stopped at the beach along the Bay of Pigs.  I was concerned when I saw this on the schedule, that it would be like in Vietnam where we had to go to see the atrocities that the Americans did.  But this was not like that at all.  Livan explained that the name came about because there were so many wild pigs in the area.  So when someone said to a friend, lets go fish at the bay of the pigs - that is what he meant.  I have not read any detail about this event, but Lavin said that mostly the soldiers who were in this invasion were Cubin people who were recruited by the US.  And the actual location was not near as picturesque or comfortable as these photos show.

We saw lots of cows, horses, and donkeys feeding in the ditches next to the national roads.

We stopped to talk to some fishermen along the road.

They were really drunk, so I probably should not have shown his face.  His friend was sleeping it off under some plastic you can see at the bottom of the photo.

These are sacks filled with rice.  Rice farmers spread the rice along the side of the roads.  They dry the rice there and then sweep the husks off and finally bag the rice for sale.

Notice the cactus fence around the house.  We saw this all over the country side.

This was so funny.  If you can imagine some government worker who works in construction. It is the weekend and he says to his friend the farmer.  Wouldn't you like to use my grader to plow your field.  I will only charge you ? pesos.  Note all the birds feeding on the worms and grubs.  As Livan explained to us, the government offers lots of jobs, but most of them only pay a small amount a month, let say $16.  But you need $ 30 to actually run your household for that time.  So people are very enterprising.  So if you have a job driving a truck between cities, you can easily pick up cash by giving people rides on the way back.  There are actually jobs for people along the check points on the highways for people to organize those who want a ride and those who want to provide a job for a fee.  When ever we asked Livan to explain he would say - you can't explain it - its just Cuba!

 And on into Cienfuegos.  This is Livans favorite town.

I could not figure out what was happening with this lady.  This is a government building.  Mike tried to take a picture inside and was quickly motioned away.  At first it looked like the lady was talking to the guard - but later he seems to be searching her handbag.  Another mystery.

The home stay in Cienfuegos.

We had to walk several blocks away to find the "hot spot" for Internet at a hotel  We wanted to take photos of the sunset over the water.  But it took too long to get our emails downloaded and we were too late.