Martin um die Welt: 8) Mantanzas, Soroa and Pinar del Rio

Dienstag, 29. April 2014

8) Mantanzas, Soroa and Pinar del Rio

The next morning (29.04.) we drove from Varadero to Mantanzas - the capital of the district. There are not many tourists in the city and we quickly drawed the attention from those few people to us who are eager to get some money from tourists. Other than that, the people in Mantanzas were very friendly and we saw a lot of real Cuban life. Snacks and bread were super cheap here and almost everywhere people only wanted the "moneda national" instead of the tourist "CUC". Still, the houses were largely worn down giving this city a ruin like atmosphere... especially at the river bank. We visited a large mosaic picture of Che Guevara before we continued from Mantanzas all along the highway past Havanna to Soroa. On the way we picked up a hitchhiking engineer... but only because the highway police asked us to. Ofcourse he quickly wanted to sale us accomodation... but other than that he was very friendly :) In Soroa we parked our car at Hotel Villa Soroa. We walked past the Orchid garden and were eager to climb some hill... but this way turned out to be a dead end. So we drove down to the waterfall entrance. There we visited the waterfall first which was nice but not impressive. Then we climbed the hill which offered amazing views over the country :D
As it was late afternoon we continued on our way... the plan was to go to Playa Maria la Gorda... but we already expected not to make it this far that day... so we stopped in Pinar del Rio. This is the worst town when it comes to touts we have seen in all Cuba. Every young guy tried to tell some lies that we couldn't go this street or that the next crossing was closed due to a festival or repairs or whatever and that they would offer to guide us the way. Near the bus station it was almost scary when people shouted and approached our car... we closed windows, locked the door and slowly continued. Finally we stayed at the casa particulares "Casa Colonial" where we could also park our car in their courtyard. At the casa we met two german guys from Hamburg. Everyone - even the house owners - wanted to bring us to some restaurant to receive commission... that was really annoying. After some dinner at the main street we met the Germans again and enjoyed some Mojitos together. The bar was then closed by soldiers and we were asked to stay by the owners. As it felt rather uncomfortable we left shortly after and went for sleep.