Dave's World O' Wonders

Las Yagrumas, originally uploaded by davethetemp.

Okay back to the Travel. As I mentioned this was an eco-tour of Cuba so we left Havana airport and went out immediately of the city and into the countryside. If memory serves, our first stop, "Las Yagrumas," is about 45 minutes out of town. As you can see, it's a typical "all inclusive." resort on the edge of San Antonio De Los Baños. Nothing particularly special about the place although it was close to the caves and formations we saw the next day. It was fairly down at the heels and many of the rooms had problems with showers and such.
Cuban all inclusives are popular with Canadians as a low cost tropical getaway. Three of the hotel rooms you can see in this photo belonged to retired Canadian couples who travel to this same resort every year for the winter. I'm sure that they were paying far less than what it would cost for an RV park in Florida. With free food, drinks for a buck or two and pleasant February weather, you could do a lot worse.

Like all places in Cuba however, the infrastructure was in some disrepair. our room had hot water (not all did), but the shower was non-functional. I'm sure it remained broken not out of neglect, but rather that no replacement parts were available. I believe that hotel staff would cannibalize parts from some rooms to make others more functional. When 20 couples showed up as we did, they were out of tricks. At any rate, it was far more pleasant than some of the facilities I'd used in the Navy, so I squatted to shower and moved on.

posted by Barb and David  # 6:15 PM