I can barely understand the Creole of the driver and his first mate. It turns out that they know the maze of twisty single lane island roads like no one's business, but they couldn't parse the map of the island we showed, when we said, "We want to go *there*". We ended up at the international airport on the west side of the island instead of the historic airport halfway down the south side.

Wrecked Cuban plane

We stopped by a cacao estate and a small chocolate factory. The "factory" was actually like someone's house, with an annoyed chef guy in a do rag, who offered to show us around even though we hadn't called ahead to schedule a tour. He ushered us through the various rooms with different machines processing cacao in various stages.

Next we visited a rum distillery that still made use of wood-fired furnaces, a water wheel, and manual transfer of fermented sugar cane in long-handled scoops.

Oh, and did I mention the roads on the island? There isn't always room for cars going both ways, and the roads have endless blind curves. The van drivers toot their horns and then barrel around blind curves, no matter all the school children, old ladies, chickens and goats along the road. (No sidewalks)

Bananas, nutmeg and cacao grow everywhere around here. It looks like jungle on the side of the road, interspersed with colourful houses on stilts on the steep hillsides. There are monkeys here, although I haven't seen evidence of them yet. People walk along the road in their school uniforms, or farm clothes, or nice dresses.

Occasionally higher up in the mountains, you get a glimpse of the edge of the island. The end of the world, where hills give way to harbor, or just nothingness.