Wed Dec 25

We toured the town of Matanzas today. It was nice to see another town outside of Habana. The buildings are more modest, although there still is plenty of interesting architecture. There are again many buildings in shambles, but it seemed to me that there also were many fixed up as well.

Our first stop was at a printer whopublished small, hand printed books. The works were very artistic and lovely. A poet joined us to read some of his poetry, with our guide Magalee translating.

This is the "people to people" part of our trip. Tour companies can only come from the U.S. to Cuba under some kind of special license. The newest one is this "people to people" license where it is required for us to meet Cubans, particularly those doing a variety of artistic endeavors. In fact, there is a requirement for 8 hours a day of people to people exchanges! We all are finding this a bit draining, and would rather have a few less hours of people-to-people and a few more hours of people–to-beach.

Our next stop at after the poet was a stroll to a nearby art studio with some impressive sculptures and ceramic work, with the artists there to show us their work. (More people to people.)

Next we went to a pharmacy museum. The place was kept exactly like it would have been in the 1800's, with all the bottles of medicine, salts, and oils, beautifully displayed in original bottles and porcelain. We found it quite remarkable that it had been kept intact, with vials still full of pills and liquid potions.

Our lunch was in a lovely hotel that had been recently restored. Apparently one of the biggest barriers to more tourism in Cuba is the lack of quality hotel space. Some people are trying to catch up. However, our guide told us that much as the restaurant is lovely, the rooms are far less so, which is why they selected the modern hotel where we were staying.Backroads just started offering this trip in May.It's only their 5th trip, and they keep tweaking it with new activities and different properties. As has happened pretty much every day, a musical group came to serenade us. And note that we were the only people the restaurant. Aha! It was the same group as yesterday, so we already felt like we had friends in Matanzas.

Our next stop was to the oldest baseball stadium in the Caribbean. There we watched some young players practicing and had a chance to ask questions of the coach (yes, more people to people). I can summarize his statements by saying that Cubans really like baseball.

Our last stop before returning to the hotel was to see a short dance performance. I found it mildly annoying in that it was a bunch of pre-pubescent girls who were shaking their various body parts

as if they were 22 (or what little of those particular body parts they had). I guess it seemed fine to me if they had been doing folk dancing, or if the girls were older, but it struck me as odd that these were the type of dances that they were performing. On top of this, all the moms were standing around, squealing with delight and photographing this proud moment, and shaking their own body parts, which were far more ample than those of their daughters. I felt a bit better about the scene afterwards when I went to talk with the girls (with the help of one of our guides) and learned that while several of them had ambitions to be dancers, several others wanted to be doctors, a journalist, and a teacher.

Finally, back to the hotel for a little rest before dinner.
-- Donna