Maggie and I rented a taxi to visit Santa Clara to visit my great grand father's grave, and to check out the sites outside of the resort. We were able to rent a taxi, and the taxi driver (Jorge Luis Chong - El Chino) was able to bring along a interpreter, who happened to be his step-daughter. Her English was not perfect, but it was good enough for us to communicate fairly well together.
The church that was closed.
We saw a flight of flamingos as we left the cayo. This would happen to be the only time that we see any flamingos, which is disappointing considering that Cayo Coco was known for their flamingos. Our first stop was in a town who's name I forgot. We were to visit a church in the centre of the town, but we found out once we got there that the church was closed! That was a little disappointing. However it did give us a chance to walk around and stretch our legs for a bit.
Maggie in the Santa Clara town square.
Afterward, we headed to Santa Clara to find my great grandfather's old shop and his grave. We already had directions and GPS coordinates so it should be a fairly easy job right?
Well the first step was to get to the town square and get oriented by the tallest building in town: The Green Hotel. Actually, we didn't know what the name was, but it was easy to spot. Then we just had to follow the directions..
Me with the tallest building in Santa Clara in the background.
Although it was a little annoying trying to find out the names of the streets, and we did not know the name of great grandfather's shop, so we spent some time asking around for directions. (My GPS was taking forever to get satellite signal.)
Me and Maggie in front of La Pera.
We did manage to make our way to the shop, but it was closed. It looked pretty empty inside as well. Our interpreter asked a neighbour where the shop owners were and we were told that they had no food to sell, which is why the store was closed. That was a little disappointing, but the cemetery was only a few blocks further down so we continued walking.
I should have mentioned that late August is not a great time to be outside in Santa Clara if you do not like heat or humidity (I dislike both). The sun did not help either! It was HOT! We did find the cemetery no problem. I took a video of the occasion.
Even with the directions and instructions and plot location it still took us quite some time to find great grandfather's grave, so I took another video to direct people to the grave from the right (not the main) entrance.
Oh yes, and we took a picture as well, although we did forget to bring any incense, flowers, or fruits.. Our interpreter offered to help us look for my great grand uncle's grave, but I was already dying from the heat and we were getting hungry, so we decided to go for lunch.
Maggie and I in front of grade grandfather's grave. We forgot the fruit and incense.
But we did manage to go to a really nice (authentic apparently) Cuban restaurant that our taxi driver found. The food we plentiful and cheap! ($15 to overfeed four people with enough food to feed two more!)
Lunch at Big Bang Latino restaurant.
For those of you wondering where the restaurant was, Big-Bang Sabor y Frescura Latina was located at Buen Viaje #70 e/ Union y Maceo. After lunch, we headed over to check out monument and museum for Che Guevara.
Che Guevara's monument.
I found the blocks that they used to build the monument very interesting. It's made of coral and you can see the old sea creatures embedded in the rock.
A close-up of the stone they used for the monument.
There were plenty of other interesting sites during our tour to Santa Clara, including all of the classic cars, horse drawn carts, Canadian paraphernalia, sugar cane, and the houses that people lived in. It is certainly an educational experience, and I certainly appreciate poor John Gorrie's efforts.
That night at the resort Maggie and I watch the evening show which showcased dancing styles from the different parts of Cuba. Before the show started, the dancers actually came into the dining room for some sample dancing which got everyone excited to watch.
So it seems as if the link I had to the Polynesian Cultural Centre was flagged as a bad site. I double checked the link and, yup, I got a warning when I tried to visit it. I double checked if the link was changed and no, the search and Wikipedia still point to the same page so.. I just removed the link. We will see how the repost goes.
Had a long night again with the baby and ended up sleeping through most of the morning. Spent the rest of the afternoon trying to book a few events for the rest of the week but only got around to booking a Dubai city tour and the desert motorcycling on the weekend. We had the desert safari that night and our pickup was at 1530. Originally we were to take Elsy with us but later on decided to leave her at the house. That was our best decision of the night. The second best was taking jackets along with us. It got pretty cold pretty quick once the sun began to set, and the winds picked up as we left the compound and we ended up driving into the desert in the middle of a sand storm. First up was a quick pit stop at some store in the middle of nowhere. The vendors were hawking scarves for way more than they were worth, but we both realized that with the winds picking up we needed something to protect our faces from the flying sand. Next was a quick photo shoot when we entered the dunes. ...
So most of the family is vaccinated now. Serena is the lone outlier, and that is due to her age. Because of that, we have decided to keep her with my parents and not send her to daycare anymore until she gets both of her shots. We had pulled her out when Omicron hit this winter and was pretty hard when we tried keeping her at home, but now that Maggie is back at work we had to go back to sending her to my parents. This situation may be the norm for a while as the under five trials for the Pfizer vaccine have not gone very well. She does not really know much about what she is missing, but she really needs to build up those social skills and daycare is a great place for learning to communicate with her peers, whether physically, or virally. But with cases at the daycare every couple of weeks or so, we figure that it is best to wait just a little bit longer..
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