After being served a light breakfast by our casa particular
host, we left Trinidad for Indio Hatuey. Enroute we stopped at Villa Yaguanabo
where we went for a dip in the Caribbean from a sand beach.
Peggy, Liz and Marlen
Jody and Angela with Limbert off in the distance.
Open café above the beach
Classic bar displaying liquor and Lucky Strikes
This was then followed by a tour of the Jardin Botanico Soledad, formerly Harvard University Tropical Plant Research Station. The garden is fantastic even though we only saw about 5 hectares of the 94 hectares total, which houses some 1,500 species of tropical plants, including 245 varieties of palms. We were given a guided tour by a scientist named Hilda who was extremely knowledgeable and engaging.
Such tropical beauty!
Hilda...so incredibly knowledgable...her depth & breadth OMG!
One of the 245 varieties of palms
Youthful palms.
Cuba pre-revolution blockade cars are everywhere...including in the arboretum
I took videos of Hilda's tour which I hope to place online soon. Before my trip I found very little online about the Atkins/Harvard University garden. Here is what I found:
We then left the garden driving through Cienfuegos on to Indo Hatuey, an agroecology research station of about 800 acres in Matanzas province. Dr. Fernando Funes met us there having driven there to meet us from Havana. We stayed onsite at the Villa Hatuey which are dormitories with four beds in each room.
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