Retired Nomads - Part 2 : Las Terrazas, Cuba

Monday May 23, 2022 – Las Terrazas in Artemisa province

This was one of our favorite days because we love nature. It was a day to explore the self-sustaining eco-community in the Artemisa province.

through the window on the drive

the horses pulling the carts really pranced

There was a man-made lake, and we were down taking photos of birds. We were then taken to the bar for, you guessed it, another mojito. Otis was our guide for the community and when he joined the table, he mentioned that he saw us taking photos and asked if we were taking landscape photos or were we interested in birds. We said birds and he immediately changed up our day. Another great band played while we had our mojitos. It's nice when a guide is observant of the clients and makes changes. I think the nature walk was part of the tour, but the extra time birding was a real bonus for us.

I didn’t bring binocs since I thought it was a village visit. He got his and shared them with me. We still went to the community, but we spent most of the morning birding. Awesome! Cuba has a lot of endemic birds that we were eager to see. He found quite a few of them. We heard a Cuban Tody but despite calling it with snapping fingers it didn’t get close enough to see. We did however see lots of birds including the Cuban Trogon which is beautiful, and we did get some great shots of it. The icing on the cake was seeing this huge owl the Stygian Owl. He was high in the tree and was preening, so not great shots, but an awesome find!

Cuban Blackbird

Gray Mockingbird

Otis, our guide

Common Gallinule

Smooth-billed Ani

Gray Kingbird

La Sagra's Flycatcher

Loggerhead Kingbirds

Red-legged Honeycreeper

female Yellow-faced Grassquit

Emerald Hummingbird

Red-legged Thrush

Northern Flicker

Black-whiskered Vireo

Cuban Trogon

Red Cotton Stainer

school

Cuban Pewee

Cuban Green Woodpecker

Loggerhead Kingbird

Olive-capped Warbler

Stygian Owl

After the tour we enjoyed a country-style lunch at La Casa del Campesino restaurant collective. While all of our meals had been great so far, we really enjoyed the “homestyle” cooking.

Otis, Arsenio & Dario

salad

yuca

pork

chicken

dessert

kitchen

We finally went to the community, and it was very interesting to see how they created the terraces to farm to get food for their community. They built buildings, a school, medical facility, a town square and everything for people that had been homeless prior to working together to create this community. We visited a local artist’s studio. I’m sure we were to spend more time there visiting other areas, but we were pleased with our day birding.

West Indian Woodpecker

Hotel Moka - eco lodge

local that showed us around the community

shopping, medical etc.

main plaza

some of the terraced gardens

art studio

After the community tour we were taken back to the hotel. Dinner tonight was not included in our tour and the guide recommended Beirut. It was walking distance from the hotel and the food was wonderful. We had to wait for some heavy rain to pass, but it was worth the wait. Greg had a lamb Kabob and I had the chicken falafel and while it was good, the chicken in Cuba has a very different taste that wasn’t to my liking. Greg’s was very good. Dario told us the dessert was very good and that they used the same 5 ingredients, but the dessert was different every night. We ordered dessert and were told they didn’t have any. (we thought that was the joke that the same 5 ingredients used created NO dessert) Dario told us later that they really do serve dessert, they were just out. We walked around the Malecon for a while before heading back to the hotel to get ready for our next day’s adventure.