Although the room was rather tired looking and had a funny indefinable smell, everything is relative and given the other potential options of mosquito hell or the back seat of the car, we were pretty happy to be there.

At breakfast, we met out Dutch saviour again, who had brought his wife and kids to the hotel for a day by the pool. We explained we'd decided to stay an extra day and would head along the coast road the next day. It's for the adventurous, he explained. At times it's an "ugly" road and some of the bridges are very bad (he put out his hand at a 45 degree angle), but if you take it carefully its fine. He was heading along there next week and had been along in the last few weeks.

Reassured, we figured we would risk the road less travelled coastal road, which was less than half the distance of heading back up to Bayamo and along the national highway to Santiago de Cuba.

For our day of rest we walked along the beach, called in at the dive centre (which was closed) so we pottered around for the day relaxing by the pool, eating tasty beef sandwiches and chips for lunch and a few drinks (as Jon wanted us to get our £20 worth).

I called in at the tiny beauty salon and booked in for a massage and manicure (CUC 13 for both or £10 - so not bad!). After a lazy day and dinner at the al a carte restaurant, we headed off for an early night, whilst the enthusiastic Canadians watched some kind of cabaret show - each to their own…