Day 11

Last night there was a little incident involving us returning to our room after tea and finding the security guard running away from the back door of our room. This is the first time that we became slightly concern about security. Today we reported the fact and we got apologies from a number of people including the guard that said that it was an unlucky situation as he was checking that our room's door was close (from the inside?). Anyway I'll dedicate a separate comment about security in Cuba.

Today the day is almost entirely dedicated to the visit of a community, Las Terrazas, that is also biosphere reserve. This small community of 1000 people spread into 25,000 square km is a nice example of how communities in remote areas can be promoted and supported. This lovely place has all sort of services; nursery/primary/secondary doctors with a small lab, pharmacy and operation room (for minor surgery). Additionally there a cinema and a theatre, all those are the perfect incentive for people to stay instead that leave for the city.

As part of our tour we visited an ex-coffee plantation (Buena Vista), all the schools, we've spoken with one of the doctors. As usual we posed a number of questions and the answers were very interesting. The community attracts attention and tourists tend to have a one day tour from Havana (just one hour away). To make this experience unforgivable we had lunch in the best restaurant so far; El Romero (The Rosemary). As described in our program this is a vegetarian place, a gourmet vegetarian restaurant. This is quite right the food was fabulous, tasty different and healthy. After weeks of either: pork, chicken or fish we all were craving for something different. The two chief well deserve an applause and a generous tip.

We had coffee in the nearby store (Cafe de Maria) where the serve locally produced coffee in a lovely terrace overlooking the town. The last activity for today was a wee walk in the reserve to get to another nice waterfall where tourists can try the cold water. I wasn't really in the mood of swimming in the river so instead we took some pictures and relaxed under the warm sun.

Today was a very interesting day and after all the above we were fairly tired to we just rest and had dinner and few drinks in the afternoon.