Carolyn's Various Travels: November 2025

When we arrived, we were greeted with a lovely spread of fresh fruit to snack on before getting settled in at our hostess' house. We started to get to know the people traveling from San Antonio and enjoyed sharing stories of previous visits that people had made. Our hostess was a lifelong member of the church (age 85) and had a sizeable house (with 5 bedrooms and two bathrooms) that was similar to a dormitory. She has hosted people for many years and was so kind. We put up mosquito nets and had small solar lanterns with us for the evenings when the power was out. I was glad I brought earplugs because between the roosters that chose to crow throughout the night (not just at sunrise), and the occasionally barking dog in the backyard who literally slept a foot outside my open window, it was kind of hard to rest well. Our hostess had a large solar battery (hooked to an array on the roof??) that would power her TV in the evenings (She liked watching soap operas), her refrigerator, and would allow us to charge our phones. It did not have enough power to run the water pump to fill the holding tank on the roof, so we were told when we arrived that we should not try to flush the toilet or take a shower until the power came back on in the morning and the tank could be refilled.

Our host house (about 8 blocks from the church)

TV and fridge ran off the large solar battery

Managed not to get tangled up enough to rip down my mosquito netting

The dog slept right outside my window.

washing up by solar lantern at night

This patio was lovely and would be where I would park myself all day in the summer. Its in the shade of a tree and open to the breeze.

I was excited to return to Placetas Cuba this fall to visit our sister church family there. After a 2 day visit last December, I was looking forward to meeting more people and building some deeper relationships. Our visit was scheduled for 3 full days and 2 half days, with 2 additional travel days. It is impossible to travel all the way from Wichita to Santa Clara in one day. With only one flight daily, we had to stay overnight in Miami and catch the flight on the second day. We did the same in reverse on the way home (staying overnight in Dallas). It was pretty tiring, especially since we were delayed 8 hrs on our way there (stupid government shut down with curtailed flights).

The host home that we stayed in only had power a few hours a day (mostly first thing in the morning). This affects everything: cooking meals, water pumping to the storage unit on the roof so you have running cold water, access to (already very spotty) cellular coverage, etc. Our hosts were super hospitable, but it is good to be home.

We asked what we could bring to help and were given lists of over the counter meds, and supplies for their weekly children's program. We were joined by their other partner church from San Antonio and between our two groups we brought in 10 large suitcases (50-70 lbs each) of supplies. We had to spend the night in Miami on our way there because of flight connections, so the three of us had to schlep 8 suitcase from the airport to the hotel and back.

We were in a mini bus that seats 16, but barely held the 9 of us because of all the luggage.

I didn't realize until we made the trip back to the airport in half the time how much stress we were putting on the old bus! We only had room for the craft supplies on the tables, the medicines filled 4 full large suitcases and didn't get sorted while we were there.

Sorting out all the art supplies

One of the suitcases filled with pill bottles

Inventory complete!

We arrived in the early afternoon. The flight is just 45 mins from Miami and its like entering a different world. Even though I did not make any customs declarations like I did last time, I was still one of the last ones out of the arrival hall. They randomly picked one of my bags full of medicines to spot check and had to take every single pill bottle out to look at it. We loaded on the bus and headed out from Santa Clara to Placetas (about 45 min drive). It was an overcast day which made it cooler (about 75 instead of 80). They have had trouble with chikungunya (mosquito borne disease) and we were all wearing long sleeves, so we were thankful. While they do have beautiful old US cars, they mostly have motor scooters, bikes, lots of horse carts and old Soviet era cars that are falling apart. In one picture, there are two people on the scooter in front of us, with the person in back balancing and holding on to a bookshelf.