cuba: camaguey

My bus from Santiago de Cuba to Camaguey left over an hour late, and arrived even later than that. Argh. It was just short of 2200 when we arrived. My accomodation knew I was coming, so there was a taxi driver waiting for me with my name on a paper at the bus station. Thank goodness, as it was way after dark. He dropped me off at the right house, the lady showed me my room, and I pretty much went straight to sleep.

Camaguey is basically right in the middle of Cuba. The third largest city in Cuba, it has a population of about 300,000, and is known for it's curvy streets. No such thing as an easy grid in Camaguey. It was originally known as Puerto Principe, but the name was changed in 1903 to honor a tree. Yes, a tree. But to be fair, a legend says all life is descended from this tree. The location of the city was originally somewhere else, and was actually changed twice before being located where it is now, in 1528. One of the Unesco designated cities of Cuba, it's also known for being different from Havana and Santiago, neither east nor west.

Before going to sleep I ordered breakfast for the next morning, which was the same general thing I'd had each morning in Santiago. Fruit, eggs, rolls, ham and cheese, fresh made fuit juice, and coffee this time. Since I hadn't had coffee in quite a while, (and by a while I mean a couple years, when I had it for the first time in four years or so,) I decided to try it. I added a bunch of sugar, and my cup had more than half milk. It wasn't bad, not as bitter as I remembered. My body didn't like it so well, as about 30 minutes later I had to use the loo and my heart was racing and I was nauseous. Ugh.

Once I got to feeling normal again I went for my first walk of the day. I wanted to see a church first, but it was closed so I had to be okay with admiring the outside. You could tell it has been painted recently. I followed a pedestrian street through the middle of town to a platz. Nothing exciting in this platz, so I kept going down another street, which brought me to another platz.
Each time I got to a new platz I had to double check where I was, since I couldn't rely on the traditional grid layout in this city. 

This platz was bigger, and had a statue of Ignacio Agramonte, an independence hero. He was originally a cattle rancher who led the area's fighters against Spain. There were people in this platz, all sitting in the shade of course.

On one side of the platz was a church, and it was open, yippeee! Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Candelaria. Please tell me locals have shortened the name to something a bit easier to say. The church itself was fairly simple, but I really liked it. I paid 1 CUC to climb the bell tower, which was quite nice. There were several levels, and all of them had a great breeze. The views all around were awesome, of the whole city.

I walked to another platz, this one had a few souvenir stalls set up in the middle. Those who were selling from the stalls were keeping an eye on them from seats in the shade.
The guidebook told me there was a museum on one side of the platz, but when I walked in I found out it was closed for renovations. Argh. Is it just me, or does closing during the middle of one of the high tourist seasons seem like a dumb move?

From there I walked to a cemetery. I guess it's a bit strange, but I like visiting cemeteries. They're very different in various areas of the world.
Even though I'd already been to cemeteries in Havana and Santiago, I wanted to see more.
This cemetery was attached to the back of a church (closed,) and was free to enter. Just like the others, everything was white, or light gray. Hot hot hot because the heat and sun reflected onto me.

As before, everything was above ground, as far as I could see. Also as before, some tombs were really fancy, others not at all. On one side of the area were the markers for folks who didn't have so much money, their 'tablets' were set onto shelves. Maybe it's not the right way to describe it, but they almost looked like shelves of books to me.

After leaving the cemetery, I walked to another platz, plaza del Carmen. There is a church on one side, Iglesia del Carmen, but it was closed. Around the platz were various sculptures of people from Camaguey (sometimes called Agramontinos, after the independence hero I mentioned earlier,) doing regular things. The one that struck me the most were chairs with ladies drinking tea (or probably coffee,) sitting around gossiping. The artist who made the sculptures has a gallery on the platz, so I looked through it, but there was nothing I'd be interested in buying.

I walked past two more churches, one of them was Baptist, both were closed. What is the point in putting them on a map or mentioning them in a guidebook if they're all closed?

I came to another platz with another museum, and since it was only midafternoon, it was still open. This was the Casa Natal de Ignacio Agramonte. Basically a museum about the guy revered by the town. I think this was his house, which was pretty nice. It was similar to other homes of wealthy Cubanos from back in the day: two floors, and wooden, with a courtyard in the middle; the museum is up on the second floor.

Each room was set up with furniture (bedroom, living room, dining room, etc...,) as well as posters with descriptions of various aspects of Agramonte's life.

After leaving the museum I took a quick look around the platz on which it was located. Of course the church was closed, I expected nothing less at this point. One of the buildings had a 'picture' on it's side, like the building in Havana. I didn't recognize the face, but I'd only recognize two faces: Che and Fidel Castro, so who knows.

At that point I was tired and hot, so I went home for a couple hours. It's amazing how much better you feel and how fast it happens when you get into a cooler environment.

I went for another walk, though this one started with an hour of internet. As I think I said in an earlier post, there is no such thing as free wifi. Various hotels now have wifi, but to get onto it, you have to buy a wifi card. There is also a public wifi system, which you can find in platzes or other specific areas of a city. You can always tell when you're in one of those areas because everyone is standing or sitting there, looking at their phones.

To get onto public wifi, you also have to buy a wifi card. 

I bought this internet card from a hotel, it was only 2 CUC for the hour. That is a great price, (5 CUC was the most common price I found around the country,) so I knew I'd be back to buy more cards, especially because they could be used anywhere in the country. The hotel lobby was not air conditioned, but the couch wasn't a bad place to be for an hour.

I walked up Republica street, which is supposed to turn into a sort of street fest every Saturday evening. It didn't, but it was still a nice walk. I walked over the train tracks, noticing that the front side of the train station was undergoing renovation work. The street was torn up and blocked off there, I wonder how long that will last.

I walked past a college, and several churches, all closed. Since it wasn't the city center there were fewer people out on the streets. At one point I turned around and came back, just because. As I walked back the sun started to set, the colours were nice.

When I got back to where I'd started my walk I was at a small platz, a concert was taking place. Apparently this was the entire street fest. I enjoyed the rest of the concert, finding a seat right in the middle of the steps in front of the stage area.

The next morning I tried coffee at breakfast again, but had the same reaction, even worse this time. Maybe I drank it too fast? It tasted okay going down, maybe I'm just not used to it? The rest of breakfast was awesome.

I went for two walks this day, both were pretty long. When I thought about it later, I could've done at least one of them the day before, just by getting going a little earlier in the day. Oh well.

The first walk was out to a church mentioned on the map and in the guidebook. On the way I saw another theater named America; it didn't look like it was open, and was abandoned or at least not being taken care of. I also saw a playground with a nice wall mural on the side, very cute. Not surprisingly, it was empty. No one wants to play in the direct sun in the middle of the day. 

I feel like the guidebook didn't mark something correctly, because the church I found wasn't a building. It was more like a shelter, there were no walls. There were pews and an altar, a statue of Mary, and fans. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I guess I expected walls.

Then I had a long hot walk back to the city center area. I passed a different church and noticed three men had set up a table in front, and were playing dominoes. They weren't in the shade, I don't know why they chose that particular location. 

I found another church with three front spires, closed like the ones I'd tried to see the day before. By then I was feeling dehydrated and tired, so I went home to rest and cool down.

My second walk started later in the afternoon. I walked out of the Unesco recognized historical district, walking east. I was headed to a park, and of course passed several churches along the way, all of them closed. I was able to stay in the shade most of the time, which felt really good. On one street, most of the buildings had columns in front, which created a kind of tunnel to walk through, if that makes sense.

The way the columns were shaped or painted changed for each building, which caught my eye in terms of photography.

The route marked on my travel app took me down a few unpaved back streets. The houses were the same as others in town, but the streets weren't paved. My walk also took me past a few Soviet style apartment blocks, though these were painted so they weren't ugly gray.

I finally made it to the park, which surrounds a man made lake, called the Lake of Dreams.

Entry to the park was 1 CUP, or 4 US cents. Even if the whole city pays that fee every day, how does that amount ever add up to anything useful? As I walked through and saw the lake I realized I would never have called it the Lake of Dreams, but I wasn't on that committee.

Parked next to the lake was an old Soviet plane, it was used as part of an ice cream shop. I'll give them points for creativity in that sense, but the ice cream itself left much to be desired. I walked in and ordered (or so I thought,) 2 scoops of chocolate ice cream. About ten minutes later they put a small bowl of one scoop of white ice cream in front of me. When I asked about the flavour, they said it was chocolate; I found a thin ribbon of chocolate-ish something or other, but tasted vanilla-y. Oh well. I asked for the bill and was told it was 7 pesos. At first I thought they have to be kidding if they think I'm paying that much, then I realized that was 7 CUP, not 7 CUC. In other words, my scoop was about 25 US cents.

I walked along the lake for a bit, watching others as they enjoyed time with family and friends. There was a little train, I imagine it was for kids, but it wasn't running. I took photos anywho. There was a space to rent rowboats, but I didn't see anyone doing so. I found a tiny little dock that was rather cute, but the yellow painted railings made it less so. There were signs in a few places telling people not to get into the water, but that didn't stop everyone, there were at least two different groups of people swimming. 

I used the main road to get back toward the city center, and stopped in a huge park on the way back. Casino Campestre is the largest urban park in the country, according to the sign. They had a zoo (which I skipped,) as well as a few sculptures, an empty swimming pool, a weedy basketball court, a baseball stadium, and a large Soviet style monument to Ignacio Agramonte.

As I was winding through this park it started to thunder and lightning, but most people were staying outside. At this time of year I think the weather was typical.

The clouds rolling in were pretty dark, but that didn't seem to deter many people. I was surprised to see a group of friends playing football, (soccer,) they didn't seem to care at all about the weather. I suppose I can't say anything, since I was wandering around taking photos in the craziness.

When it started raining it was time for me to go. I hate rain. My umbrella is old and has holes (I really need a new one,) but it helped keep me mostly dry.

On the way back I stopped in the hotel from the evening before, and bought five 1 hour internet cards, and proceeded to use one of them. It's amazing how fast that time can go when you're not careful. I learned to write down ahead of time what messages I needed to send, and things I needed to check on. You can prewrite messages in email, they'll send automatically when you get online, which saves some time. You can also do your instagramming ahead of time, those will also post when you get online.

After internet I went back to my room and basically hung out for a few hours. There is only one bus from Camaguey to my next destination, it left at 0215. To catch the bus I was told to be at the bus station an hour ahead, so that meant around 0115. In other words, I didn't sleep because I knew it would be useless.

The bus left on time, yahoo!

If I come back to Cuba I would consider coming back to Camaguey, or at least the province in general.