Breakfast prepared by Emilio was amazing. It was clearly evident by the preparation and presentation that he was a trained chef. We were astounded that he had managed to find top quality fruit, cheese, bread, eggs and ham for omelettes and fresh pineapple for juicing. The linen on the breakfast table, like that in our room was spotless and expertly presented. 
Emilio and his family were very proud of their establishment, and deservedly so as not only was it welcoming but it was so much cheaper than the hotels in Havana. Emilio charges the sort of prices I was expecting to be charged in Cuba – Bed ($25), dinner including wine ($30), breakfast ($8) and good old car security ($2).
After a long breakfast, and an even longer farewell to Emilio and his family, we eventually set of through the Escabray Mountains for a three hour trip to visit Santa Clara, the final resting place of Commondante Che Geuvara. On the way we visited a lookout with stunning views over Trinidad. This place also seemed to be home to a boy with a pet tarantula.
The people in the villages we passed through were all vey friendly especially the guy selling fruit on the side of the road in front of a crashed Cuban MiG 25 fighter, but there houses were basic and the cowboys and their animals were still very thin. Eventually, after a long, slow, but very interesting drive, we reached Santa Clara.
Who could have guessed that Santa Clara would be overrun by German tourists and that all of the accommodation would be booked out? Still we managed to convince a very nice lady at Hotel Los Caneyes (who obviously needed some respite from the Germans) to make a room available for us. We were quite pleased to set up camp in our private ‘Cubana’ set amongst the beautiful surrounds of this lush resort complete with pool and tropical birds!
After a short nap we went off to visit the Che Guevara Memorial. For those of you who have worn his romantic counter culture image on a t-shirt or posted a print on your wall this place commands that you look past his stylized visage that has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture and really explore what it was made this man so passionate about human rights and committed to freeing the world of imperialism and oppression. 
In the museum we saw some childhood pictures and a bronze sculpture of the young Che as a child growing up in Argentina. He grew up in a wealthy and an intellectually stimulating environment, doing well at school sports (including Rugby) and chess. There were copies of his excellent school reports and his results in medical school. 
And there were items from the Revolution (uniforms, guns and water bottles), letters and photos from the battles fought on foot and on horseback, candid shots of the comrades in arms and a wonderful shot of Raul looking up at his ‘big brother’ with the look of adoration that is only seen when a smaller boy looks up to his ‘big brother’. Also very moving were Che’s words contained in a letter addressed to Fidel and written on the eve of his execution in Boliva. He remained faithful to his cause until the end and had every faith that, although his life was to be short, human rights and justice for the people would win out in the end.
Under the massive parade ground and an impressive tribute and statue of Che was the mausoleum – a memorial to the original band of eighteen men and women who came with Fidel from Mexico in 1957 to launch the Revolution from Santiago de Cuba. Che remains were interned here not long after they were returned to Cuba in 1997. Extensive DNA testing of the multiple human remains found in the grave into which the insurgents were cast after they had been executed after a failed campaign in Bolivia in 1967.
In late 1995, retired Bolivian General Mario Vargas revealed to Jon Lee Anderson, author of the biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, that Guevara's body was located near a Vallegrande airstrip. The result was a multi-national search for the remains, which would last more than a year. In July 1997 a team of Cuban geologists and Argentine forensic anthropologists discovered the remnants of seven bodies in two mass graves, including one man with amputated hands (like Guevara).
Bolivian government officials with the Ministry of Interior later identified the body as Guevara when the excavated teeth "perfectly matched" a plaster mould of Che's teeth made in Cuba prior to his Congolese expedition. The "clincher" then arrived when Argentine forensic anthropologist Alejandro Inchaurregui inspected the inside hidden pocket of a blue jacket dug up next to the handless cadaver and found a small bag of pipe tobacco.
Nino de Guzman, the Bolivian helicopter pilot who had given Che a small bag of tobacco, later remarked that he "had serious doubts" at first and "thought the Cubans would just find any old bones and call it Che"; but "after hearing about the tobacco pouch, I have no doubts." On October 17, 1997, Guevara's remains, with those of six of his fellow combatants, were laid to rest with military honours in a specially built mausoleum in the Cuban city of Santa Clara, where he had commanded over the decisive military victory of the Cuban Revolution.
When reading and thinking about Che one can’t help but be impressed by the amazing journey his thoughts had travelled since he was a young man studying medicine and by how he stayed focussed on the cause as his thinking evolved and matured, especially during the time when he rode on his beloved motor cycle around Latin America and saw the poverty, disease and hunger of the people under a plethora of oppressive puppet leaders held up by colonial powers such as the US.
How different would history have been had his outrage not be galvanized in Guatemala before quite literally bumping into Fidel in Colonia Tabacalera, a borough of Mexico City that was well known by the 1950s as an area with a Bohemian reputation and as home to writers, artists and political exiles. What if he had stayed in Cuba and not gone off to fight the battle in the Congo-Kinshasa or Bolivia?
I declare that I have been seduced by the legend of a man committed to his manifesto and admit that the aura that is cast upon those with a cause who die young is attractive. But there a layers yet to be investigated and at this point Wikipedia succinctly expresses how I’m feeling:
‘Over forty-five years after his execution, Che's life and legacy still remains a contentious issue. The contradictions of his ethos at various points in his life have created a complex character of unending duality, one who was "able to wield the pen and submachine gun with equal skill", while prophesizing that "the most important revolutionary ambition was to see man liberated from his alienation." Guevara's paradoxical standing is further complicated by his array of seemingly diametrically opposed qualities. A secular humanist and sympathetic practitioner of medicine who didn't hesitate to shoot his enemies, a celebrated internationalist leader who abdicated violence to enforce a utopian philosophy of the collective good, an idealistic intellectual who loved literature but refused to allow reactionary dissent, an anti-imperialist Marxist insurgent who was radically willing to forge a poverty-less new world on the apocalyptic ashes of the old one, and finally, an outspoken anti-capitalist whose image has been expropriated and commoditized; Che's history continues to be rewritten and re-imagined.’
Dinner was nice but way too much meat was on offer to appease the hungry Germans.
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