We left the hotel in the morning and first visited the nursery attended by Roberto’s daughter. In Cuba’s communist system, childcare and early education are considered a state responsibility and are provided free of charge from six months to six years of age.
The children welcomed us with a small performance. The walls carried messages about respecting cultural differences. The nursery was clean, well maintained and staffed by many teachers. Its surroundings told a different story: neglected box-like apartment blocks from the Soviet era, broken roads, rubbish left outside and bicycle rickshaws used for transport. The local shops held perhaps thirty or forty kinds of product at most.
We travelled east from Havana, leaving at 8:30 in the morning and reaching Santa Clara around three in the afternoon. There we visited the Che Guevara museum, memorial and mausoleum. Fidel Castro commissioned the complex to commemorate the revolutionary column associated with the city. The remains of Che, killed in Bolivia at the age of thirty-nine, were later brought here. The museum is striking in its architecture and unusual in Cuba for being free to enter.
Fidel Castro had been imprisoned after the failed 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks, then went into exile. In Mexico he met Che and organised the 26th of July Movement. The guerrilla campaign launched in Cuba in December 1956, with the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara among its members, gradually won support from other groups. When forces loyal to Batista laid down their arms and the dictator Fulgencio Batista fled on 1 January 1959, a new government began.
After the Che museum, a long coach journey took us through mountainous country associated with the guerrillas. We crossed towards Cuba’s southern coast on winding roads. Houses were small and poorly maintained, and there were surprisingly few cultivated fields or farms; much production appeared limited to each family’s immediate needs.
We arrived after dark at Meliá Trinidad, a new Spanish-built all-inclusive resort beside the sea. Had we arrived a little earlier, we might have swum. That evening, while taking a hot shower, I found myself thinking about how luxurious hot water and a warm shower remain for many people.