Breakfast was an abundant buffet.
We boarded our personal bus and headed southeast across the city and the whole island of Cuba. Leaving Havana we encountered we passed by the route where a marathon was taking place. We saw more officials than runners.
What surprised us was that we saw no small, private shops As you always see in cities, and as we have often seen in other countries. No shoe repair, no auto repair, no clothing shops, no food shops. Hmmmm, where do they buy stuff?
The countryside is surprisingly abandoned. We drove the first hour without seeing a village or a farm. A few miles of sugar cane appeared at about hour 1.5 into the journey to Zapata Swamp. Other than that, the land seemed to be abandoned.
Our guide, Milena, said Cuba has a problem with farming. Higher education is free. Almost everyone goes to college. Young people with a degree do not want to farm. They must work at a job assigned by the government for 2 years, then many emigrate. But none are assigned to farming because they are assigned to work related to their degrees. Because of the dearth of farming, they import much of their food.
We learned that it is illegal to slaughter cows. Killing a cow can get you 10 years in prison, about the same as killing a person. The government needs all the milk for their children's programs. Mostly the people eat chicken for meat. Fish is available but most of the fish they catch is exported.
The road south, across the central part of Cuba is a 4 lane divided highway. It is similar to a very old US highway.
We saw very little traffic, and almost no trucks. Most cars are 60s American cars. In the first hour we saw at least a dozen horse drawn wagons. Along the road people were hitchhiking, waving money to lure folks to pick them up in their old cars. Milena says there are one only one or two buses a day. Hitchhiking, bikes, and horses are common modes of transportation.
On the bus, Milena showed a film--638 Ways to Kill Castro. It is worth the watch. I will try to get it and watch it again.
As we got to the southern part of the island, we started to see a the land being used a bit more. There were cattle in pastures. We saw a few citrus tree orchards and more sugar cane plantations, but the overall impression is that the land is not being used.
We went through a village named Australia, after a nearby defunct factory, where the the Cuba soldiers were headquartered during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The Zapata Swamp was our destination and it took about two and a half hours to get to its boundary line. It was another 30 minutes, more or less, to reach the national park itself, where we picked up the local guide. Milena says the Zapata is the largest swamp on the world. It is big.
We drove along a dirt and limestone road into the swamp about 12 or 15 miles. Mangroves abound. Mosquitoes are equally omnipresent. The first part of the park is "forest", mangrove forest. We attempted to do some bird watching but the blood sucking critters drove us back to the bus after about 15 minutes--hardly time to get quiet enough to spot any birds. We did see evidence of sapsuckers and termites in the neighborhood!
When we reached the wetter sections of the swamp where there were fewer mangroves; the mosquitoes were less abundant and the wading birds more so. We saw flocks of flamingos -- 50 to 100 overall. We also saw black necked stilts, pelicans, little blue herons, great blues, great egrets, snowy egrets, vultures, American coots, double crested cormorants, belted King fishers, tri-color herons, and Ospreys.
Then we made our way back to the main road and headed off to lunch and the Museum of the Bay of Pigs.
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