World Cuba Santa Clara

Mike & Elese's Adventure 2005 - 2006

Cuba - Santa Clara (don't bother!) Jan 27, 2006

We decided to come here purely for the Che Guevara memorial. When we arrived we found a guesthouse and then went off to check out the Che memorial and museum.

The museum was small and contained clothing, weapons and other things that Che had used as a kid right through to when he was fighting in the Revolution. It was interesting to see but, didnt take much time to walk around.

Next to the museum was his memorial, where his body (along with the 17 others who where with him when he was executed) is now - after being recovered from Bolivia (where they were all executed). There wasnt anything to see in there, just plaques showing their faces, but it was interesting being there - as we head read a lot about Che.

So after seeing those 2 things which probably took no more than 1 hour, we headed back into central Santa Clara to have a look around, although there really isnt a thing to see in this town. We were both hungry and looking for somewhere to eat, yet there were no restaurants!! We managed to find something, which was actually a womans lounge room, where she operates as a mini-mini restaurant (if you can call it that)! We sat at a table in her lounge room and she cooked us a meal, we paid (after bartering on the price) and then left. Very Strange!

After that we headed to see a train ruin - which was from the Revolution where Che and his crew used a digger to dig up some of the train tracks carrying Batista's troops (he was the President). The train derailed and after a gun battle, Che and Co managed to claim the town of Santa Clara. They then went on to claim other towns and soon took over the entire country with Fidel Castro.

So besides the history, there really is nothing to see here. We both couldnt wait to leave. And to add insult to injury on the morning that we were leaving, we encountered 3 extremely rude Cubans in the space of about 1 hour.

The first was at the post office when I tried to post Dads bday postcard - the woman not only tried to rip me off on the stamp price (giving me a local stamp and charging me in tourist money) I think she then might not have posted it for me due to our arguing about the price. No customer service what-so-ever.

The second was when we managed to find a cafe for breakfast and they served us the worst dry ham rolls ever (not even what we asked for) and tried to charge us more for them - i refused to pay for mine as i never ate it and Mike only paid the menu price, not what they were demanding. What a cheek!

Finally at the bus station when the man taking our luggage told us we had to pay him a tip, for literally lifting our luggage onto a trolley where he then pushed it onto the bus. We werent stupid and knew this wasnt standard practice so we didnt pay. He then got angry with us so we couldnt wait in the waiting room down the hall incase he went through Mikes backpack - which cant be padlocked. So we then stood outside the 'Chiefs' office watching him (he could see us) and he never charged another tourist.

We were glad to get the bus out of that place....