Two Wheels and Two Gears..

Our plan for a sneaky pre cycle tour outing was not quite as anticipated today.Our bikes were delivered to our Casa and we looked at them with some trepidation.Thanking God that I had my gel saddle cover and proper padded shorts, it was simple to compensate for the rock hard ancient saddles.What wasn't so easy to compensate for was the non functioning gears, the best we could manage was 2 gears front and back.Fine on the flat, but rather tough for hills.With our guide (yes - you can't fart here either without a guide) we clunk and clank out of town on our old bone shakers to see the mural painting depicting pre-history through to man painted on one of the mogote cliff-faces.Heading back to town, we deviate from the standard itinerary and call in at a local tobacco farmer, who shows us how he makes the cigars and hands us each one to have with a cup of coffee.Settled comfortably in chairs in his house, we sip coffee and our guide translates and we chat about life in Cuba and Europe respectively, each party anxious to know more about the other.We buy some of his cigars (part of his 10% that he's allowed to sell himself) 10 palm-wrapped cigars for just 10 CUC and he waves us farewell, a happy man.

We rattle along back through town and out the other side along hilly roads.The first stop is a cave visit, where runaway slaves used to hide en route to escape, or if unlucky, until they were tracked down by the slave bounty hunters.An entire community lived and worshipped their gods in this cave system.Further down the road, we reached the IndianCaves that are warm and humid inside; stalactites descend and sometime meet with the upwardly mobile stalagmites.An underground river traverses through these caves and we clamber into the boat for the short trip along this underground waterway and emerge through a fern-fronded opening back into daylight.Time for a quick bocadito (not the best we've had) and lemonade, then back on the rickety transport, along winding and undulating lanes and occasionally even overtaking the odd person pushing their bike up one of the hills (clearly their bikes must have even fewer gears than ours).Back in town we hand over our bikes, thankful we only had to do around 25km on them.We bid good-bye to our guide and cross the street to our favourite people-watching bar, opposite the church, for a bocadito and mojito for the splendid price of 6 CUC for both of us!

La Ermita and Lobster

We spend a pleasant afternoon beside the pool area at the La Ermita Hotel, which has spectacular views down to the valley and the flat-topped mogotes behind.Another cigar for Jon, I update my journal and we watch tour group of germans learning salsa.I wonder how long they need to keep shuffling back and forth counting "un, dos, tres" before they can move onto a more complicated set of steps.

That evening, we take the recommendation from Any for dinner at a local Paladar.The Cavana is tucked away down a dirt track off a street one block back from the main street in town.We take a torch with us and start to wonder if we have taken the right track.A bit further along, we see a small t-junction and to the right the reassuring light coming from the house.Covered with bamboo style wood, they've created a restaurant shack feel to the place, which is a far cry from the faded elegance of colonial style Paladars in Havana that we've visited.Then again the food and the price are also a far cry from that.A simple and delicious fresh lobster 'a la plancha', with plentiful rice, beans, salad, fresh fruit and soup comes in at a crazy 10 CUC (£6.50) each.