7 January 2024, Santa Clara
Casa Lorenzo, $15 (R265)

This day in Santa Clara was our Che Guevara day. The battle fought here and won by the vastly-outnumbered revolutionaries, was decisive, putting an end to Batista's corrupt reign.
Two important sites capture the reverence in which the battle and Che the man are held: the site of the derailed trains, and Che's mausoleum at Revolution Square.
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"The monument of the Armoured Train... commemorates an event... in December 1958, where revolutionaries led by Ernesto Che Guevara used a bulldozer and homemade Molotov cocktails to derail an armoured train. Its success led to a decisive victory for the revolutionaries, and the city was captured within 12 hours, leading to the end of the Batista dictatorship."
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Che Guevara’s body was exhumed from a mass grave in Bolivia and his remains, and those of his fellow fighters, interred at a mausoleum in Santa Clara. An impressive statue and monument dominate a large square. Beneath these lie a museum and the mausoleum. The museum contains images and items capturing Che's life, including his nurse's certificate, guns, diary from Bolivia, photos from the Congo... The mausoleum is a peaceful place with a wooden ceiling, stone floor, the sound of water running through green plants, and an eternal flame burning, lit in 1997 by Fidel Castro.
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Standing in line at Heladia Coppelia, the state owned ice cream parlour.
"Coppelia is an ice cream parlor chain in Cuba, named after the ballet Coppélia. Originally built in a project led by Fidel Castro, Coppelia is state-run and sells in Cuban pesos (CUP). Havana's Coppelia employs more than 400 workers and serves 16,000 litres (4,200 US gal) of ice cream to 35,000 customers each day.
When business started in 1966, it ran with a count of 26 flavors and 25 combinations. Today, lines are generally long and the supply and selection of flavors is scarce, with usually only one or two available at any given time."
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Our 'salad' comprised chocolate only, partially melted, for just R6. They were short of spoons, so as soon as Garth finished his ice cream, his spoon was hastily removed from his plate!
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Charl: Gail made it sound too civilized - the spoon removal process was more like a hawk diving down on its prey!

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Emigration
There have been three major exoduses (exodii?) from Cuba.
The first followed the overthrow of Batista's government and the installation of Castro as president. "The first wave of emigration occurred directly after the revolution, followed by the Freedom Flights from 1965 to 1973."
The second was the Mariel boatlift, "a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbour to the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980... While the exodus was triggered by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, it followed on the heels of generations of Cubans who had immigrated to the United States in the preceding decades... After 10,000 Cubans tried to gain asylum by taking refuge on the grounds of the Peruvian embassy, the Cuban government announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so. The ensuing mass migration was organized by Cuban Americans, with the agreement of Cuban President Fidel Castro. The Cuban government considered the exodus a sort of social cleansing of the nations' so-called undesirables and organized acts of repudiation against prospective emigrants."
The third, within the last three years or so, during which an estimated 1.3 to 2 million have left the country. Bear in mind that Cuba has a population of 11 million, meaning that over 10% may have departed the country. What's particularly odd about this outflow is that the government has apparently come to mutual arrangements with countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela allowing Cubans to travel visa-free, the assumption being that they will not return, but will make their way to the US and enter and stay illegally.
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Is Cuba a depressing travel option? And why did we choose to visit?
When Charl first proposed Cuba as a cycle destination, there was no hesitation on my part. Yes to seeing communism in action, yes to confirming my (ideological) views, yes to a shallow intellectual complacency, yes to the exotic.
I also expected, as everywhere, to encounter kindness, curiosity and generosity.
We have as much if not more obvious poverty aplenty in South Africa, and we saw considerably lower living standards in West Africa. So while the poverty is distressing, as it is everywhere, it is not so much distressing because it exists, but because it could be eliminated if the government freed an enterprising populace to change their own destiny.
What I did find depressing, but what I had come to see and experience, is the impact of government control gone mad. Of ideology trumping common sense no matter the outcome. Of a belief that a few can know what is best for the many, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.