I took a walk to the beach Friday morning about 7:30. Lovely way to start a day.
At breakfast, 3 in the group decided to split off for the day and return to Old Havana instead of riding out into the countryside to see an Eco-village and orchid garden. The resort provides a free shuttle into Havana and back. Nice option.
The rest of us visited Las Terrassas. We learned that the mountains had been completely deforested by the time of the revolution in1959. Mountain people had a hard life. To restore the land, the government built terraces on the mountains to stop erosion and then replanted them. It also built a village with a tourist hotel and restaurant. The government gathered the mountain people into much better housing that it built in the village. About 1,000 live there now and the community is supposedly self-sustaining, on tourism revenues and its forests products. Houses are owned by the government and the people pay only for utilities. The house pass from generation to generation.
 |
| Cuba trogon, the national bird, captured in pixels by Libby Cagle |
I sure would prefer to live there rather than in the neighborhood where the California Restaurant is!
After another good outdoor lunch, we went bird watching and orchid gazing, also in the mountains.
The trip back to the resort took a couple of hours. We had dinner on the veranda overlooking the beach, and headed out for an evening in the night life of Havana and a visit to the Buena Vista Social Club.
No comments:
Post a Comment