We traveled to a now closed, once American owned sugar mill, where the general payroll ledgers and daily wage worker contracts were stacked haphazardly. The desolate refinery, its smokestack, its grinding stone, its narrow railway tracks and observation tower, along with warehouse buildings, tell a story of a century of American involvement in the industry.

Baseball has always been the favorite sport of Cuba, and Bob’s favorite as well, so we had to see an active ballpark. You can see the stadium refers to September 5, 1957, commemorating an uprising against the Batista regime in Cienfuegos. The Elephants are the team.

We visited Hemingway’s home, apparently untouched by time.

We then traveled on to the Bay of Pigs at Playa Giron, which hosts a museum with photographs of the invasion. A plane called the Hawker Sea Fury, used by Cuba in the invasion, sits outside the museum as a memorial of the success in fighting off the CIA sponsored brigade. Returning from the Bay of Pigs we encountered thousands of tree frogs. Our bus paused to let them pass.

Every native we met through the tour was kind and interested in us. As the days went by we asked our guide if we could strike out on our own, and while in general that was not permitted, the medical people who had brought machinery were able to take an afternoon to visit hospitals alone, and some of us wanted to see houses of worship. There are three synagogues remaining in Havana, and one is still active – the most contemporary of the three, dating from the ‘50s. We had a meeting with a docent there who took us through the history of the congregation. Later we went to a Catholic church, and to a Catholic charities housing facility that had an assisted living program ,where we met many elderly people. We learned that while traditional religion had been disdained in the early days of the revolution, the way in which it was discouraged was by refusing to offer government funded jobs to members of churches and synagogues. The Churches we visited were well cared for and attended, but we learned that Afro-Cuban traditions had become prevalent again as well, so that many Cubans had returned to Santaria, and we were told that Evangelical Christian groups had replaced many of the traditional churches.