Santa Clara Train to Havana, Cuba Videos

I ended my 2009 Cuba trip in Santa Clara, before a nervous wait for a train to Havana, as detailed in my Cuba Go Nomad article. The article  also confirms that I travelled to Trinidad and then Cienfuegos, which I was a little mixed up about while rushing the previous two blogs out. The two cities are close together.

Santa Clara, Cuba

My camera batteries had completely gone in Santa Clara, so there’s no photos. I visited Che Guevara’s mausoleum and memorial square, climbed a hill for a panoramic view of the city, sat in the colonial central square (Parque Vidal) and visited the railway museum scene of an ambush by Cuban revolutionaries on a government train.

It was one of Che’s most famous moments as a military leader, in an assault on the city he shared with Camilo Cienfuegos.

My camera batteries might have lasted until the end of the trip if I hadn’t filmed these three videos earlier in the trip, excited by walking along Havana’s Malecon seafront and the mogotes and vultures of Vinales. C’est la vie!

Havana and Vinales Videos

Travel to Cienfuegos, Cuba

Thanks for continuing to visit this site in the absence of new material. Your visits inspired me to stop waiting around to visit a scanner, and to photo my photos instead. I think they produced some quite arty looking shots.

After Havana and Vinales I travelled south to Cienfuegos. These three photos I uploaded to Google are from my bus journey, when we stopped at a café rest stop.

Cienfuegos Memories

Cienfuegos reminded me of Miami, Florida with lots of colourful buildings, wide blocks of housing and malls, a baseball stadium and yacht club, and long seafront promenades. It’s centre is a UNESCO heritage site.

There were mountains to the south, along with smoke-bellowing industrial chimneys.

I saw dolphins swimming in the bay, and did a couple of scuba dives amongst big pillars of coral off Rancho Luna resort.

I sat on the seafront under clear star-filled sky, and had a few beers in bars.

I stayed at a nice flat with two loyal party members who’d done well, but also met people complaining about their poverty.

Here’s a few photos. The first one is of a statue of popular Cuban singer Benny Moré under a Che Guevara placard.

Cienfuegos Photos

Marc Latham’s central site is the Greenygrey (http://www.greenygrey.co.uk), and he has books available on Smashwords and Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/author/marclatham).