Another dream fulfilled

Yesterday I fulfilled my dream of biking to Playa Baracoa (Baracoa Beach). I thought I couldn't pedal 43 kilometers in a day, but I did.

Here I share the outward route, which was not the same as the return. However, it was good, I got to know places I had never been to before. It turns out that Yoyo Batman picked me up at home around 9 am and he was in charge of marking the route on his map, according to which, we would take an exit street ~~hjgfddafghf~~ 😄, whatever, to Santa Fé, and there we would meet the group with whom we were going on this excursion on wheels.

It was interesting indeed. After taking the detour from the highway we went through picturesque villages (It's a shame I don't have photos because of the rush, but this will be resolved in the future), luckily the roads we drove on were probably better than the ones in the city and the best thing was that we had to climb very few hills. Most of the time it was downhill, so the journey was fairly easy.

_{Route to Baracoa Beach on Strava}

Baracoa is a few kilometres after from the residential neighbourhood of Santa Fé. We were going along 7th Avenue to get to the Panamerican Highway, both roads in very good condition too. As soon as I saw the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM, for its Spanish acronym) appear on my right, memories of a beautiful period I lived there in that beach started to come back.

This is the Santa Ana River. The ELAM has this river on one side and the sea on the other. It was inaugurated in 1999 in the facilities of a former Naval Academy and is a scientific-pedagogical project that benefits students from 122 countries in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

... Baracoa.

I had to take at least two photos of the village, where I knew we would not be passing through later. Once the boys and girls were near the sea and the huts, they were not going to move much further from there.

It is a small coastal town, with very nice little houses and I have to say that it acquired a lot of development with the inauguration of ELAM. It was precisely between 2000 and 2002, if I remember correctly, that I lived there in a house I rented. Well, there were two. I stayed for a while in a huge wooden house facing the sea and then in a flat, no longer on the beachfront.

The locals in Baracoa (those who can and have the means) rent houses or rooms to national and foreign tourists.

I didn't ask but I'm pretty sure this is one of those little houses they rent out. It immediately caught my attention because of its colours.

The sky was cloudy but the heat and the sun never stopped, maybe at the end of the post I'll share with you a semi-nude, let's say, the *bonus-photo of the day 😁 so you can see what happened to me and how I'm now bicolour. Don't cheat! Stick around and read. 🤣

The weather forecast said it would rain and it did, but in the evening while I was putting creams on my body ..... Then we had our first "little rain" of May. Last year at this time I had ripe mangoes on my trees and this year it turns out that almost all the mangoes have fallen off without being properly done.

... Baracoa 😁 (We went to refuel)

The Guarapo - Sugarcane Juice (hahaha... can't miss it)

Then we went down to the First Street, the one I showed in the picture at the beginning of this post, where you can see the wooden bridge. There we put our bikes in one place and secure them. I stayed there as a watchtower while I took some photos. The others went for a swim in the sea.

(Don't think I didn't try the water, of course I did...). I'm not really one to spend that much time in the water, I just swam a bit and I was very happy).

It turns out that while I was wandering around with my camera in hand, I heard some locals say that this bridge was repaired thanks to the goodwill of a Norwegian citizen, who has made some donations to the village and is actively involved in cultural and sports projects in Cuba. Come to think of it, I could have asked a hivian who is from this area, @pinero, whom, by the way, I met yesterday in person.

I enjoyed seeing the place so beautiful. I imagined for a moment coming to stay here and enjoying a sunset there, in front of the sea.

The boys are having fun on the trampoline hahaha... it was a blast, I took some more photos.

Some people prefer this place for bathing. I include myself in this group. In fact, it was where I always went very early in the morning and in the evening when I lived here.

However, there is also a small sandy beach and even at this time when I took these pictures, the sea was quite crowded.

I've already written almost a thousand words and I still have so much to say about our trip... Surely a few more pictures will arrive in the next few days.

I haven't forgotten about the semi-nude LOL.

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