We traveled to a remarkable botanic garden where we saw famous banyan trees and flora none of us had ever seen. We stopped at an elementary school in a remote area. It served children from kindergarten to middle school. We had already seen quite a few busloads of school children in Havana and we could see that each grade or school had uniforms distinctly representing their group. On the school wall, we saw a photo of the “Cuban Five” who were celebrated everywhere in Cuba. They were intelligence officers arrested in Miami in 1998, having infiltrated anti-Cuban groups in Miami, and given long prison sentences, but released in a prisoner exchange in 2014.

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.