May 27, 2015
Facts about Cardenas
From Lonely Planet Guide to Cuba
Threadbare after 50 years of austerity, Cárdenas is the Miss Havisham of Cuba: an ageing dowager, once beautiful, but now looking more like a sepia-toned photo from another era. Streets once filled with illustrious buildings have suffered irrevocably since the Revolution, leaving this former sugar port a shadow of its former self.
Cycling Stats
Start point: Playa Larga
End point: Cadenas
5:57 time, 96.8 km trip, 16.2 avg speed, 31.5 max speed
What happened…
Andrew writes: Picture a pancake. Or a table. Maybe a quarter. They’re all flat right? That was our ride today. Except add in some green bits at the beginning, the Zapata Swamp….and some green bits in the middle that are orange orchards, and then a green bit at the end which is the rum factory near Playa Larga, in Cardenas.
Days like today can be pretty boring. There was one stretch of maybe 15km where I rode behind Amanda, with my Kindle e-book sitting atop my handlebar bag, and I just rode my bike and read my book at the same time. Amanda thinks it’s dangerous, but boredom can be terminal too.
So we started in Playa Larga, on the Caribbean coast, and rode pretty much in a straight, flat, boring line north to Cardenas, which is on the Atlantic side, or the Strait of Florida I guess it might be called. Cardenas, incidentally, also has a small beach, called Playa Larga. No one swims there because it’s right beside the rum factory. The rum factory smells AWESOME. Like, a beer brewery doesn’t smell like beer, but a rum factory smells like rum; it’s pretty cool actually. This is an older plant, and we could see it belching black smoke from its’ smokestack, miles before we got into the city.
Cardenas is a big town, but we ended up cycling to the far end of it for dinner. This restaurant, El Ranchon, serves up a dish called “El Golaso” (Colossal?), which had 3 different types of rice, and 10 different types of meat and fish, mostly deep-fried. It was pretty much a cyclists’ wet-dream, in terms of dinners. We shared the plate and couldn’t finish it. A bargain at only $7CUC! ($7USD).
Ok, that’s it. I’ve run out of things to blather about. Ciao for now!
Today’s Photographs
[flickr_tags user_id=”17145280@N00″ tags=”052715″]