After spending allmost a week in Havana it was time for me to go to Manicaragua where I had got a job through workaway. The plan was to take a bus from Viazul (busstation) to Santa Clara where Rafa should pick me up on his motorbike. At the busstation I met a guy from Holland that was on his way to Santa Clara. We bargained down the price of a taxi that took me all the way to Rafas house, about four hours drive.
Rafa and his wife Mary are working with web design. They have a little son called David.
They have been living and working in Equador and when they moved back to Cuba again they brought Dina, the husky, with them. Cuba at this time of the year is not very warm and the nights can be cold, so Dina fared well in the clima.
In Manicaragua everything was wery cheap because there were no tourists here and I could easily use pesos. At the pizza resturant , which was owned by the government, I paid five pesos for a pizza.
They have been living and working in Equador and when they moved back to Cuba again they brought Dina, the husky, with them. Cuba at this time of the year is not very warm and the nights can be cold, so Dina fared well in the clima.
In Manicaragua everything was wery cheap because there were no tourists here and I could easily use pesos. At the pizza resturant , which was owned by the government, I paid five pesos for a pizza.
I also met Rafas mother and father. Half the year his mum is living with her mum in Florida.
The first days in Manicaragua there were three other workawayers together with me. We were mostly picking coffee beans and hanging around in the garden joking and talking to eachother.
Chris from France had been travelling for one and a half year and stayed only a few days because she was on her way to Mexico to meet friends. We managed to celebrate Mellissas birthday before she left.
Julian from Florida spoke fluent Spanish since his parents were Cubans.
Juni from Manicaragua was comming every day to wash the house and make dinner. Brown beans and rice, tomatoes and cucumbersalat, ljocca ( a root plant) and fried green bananas. For the meateaters : chicken and pigliver or fish from the local lakes.
Melissa from Texas stayd the second week together with me. We did the garden and carried bricks.
The neighbors on each side of our backyard were farmers. The hens were sleeping in the branches of a tree in the nights that is normal for hens to do when they live in their right environment.
Who invented the stupid idea that roosters only yells at sunrise? The roosters in Cuba yells all night from sunset to sunrise and also during the day.
The pigs started to scream for food around four o clock every morning.
Both our neighbors had one rooster each that used to swagger about in our backyard. They both fought for the same hen who pretended she liked both of them.
Melissa and I went hicking in the mountains in the Hanibanilla area 11 km west from our house.
The second day we took a boat over the huge dam to El Nicho to see the watherfalls. It was a two and a halv hour boatride and the last part we had to walk.
