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In this post I am going to share with you one of the happiest moments I spent in the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba. I have already shared here some photos that I took in different moments of my career as a photojournalist, but I was missing these, which I keep as a great treasure of that beautiful place.

I was on the roof of an 18-storey building on Garzón Street, after having some delicious ice cream with my work colleagues.

And it is precisely in this building, on the top floor, that you will find the Turquino ice cream parlour. On my last trip there I wanted to go up again but it was not possible. All the high points of the city were secured by soldiers from the President's personal guard, who were going to take part in a ceremony that is a tradition there to bid farewell to one year and welcome the next: the hoisting of the flag.

(My posts from those days)

Travel Log: The Yutong

Travel Log: Overcast Santiago

Travel Log: The work of a photojournalist

This is Gio Yak (a name we made up, mine was Ana Yak), who liked to use my hat to take selfies. In this post you can see me wearing that hat... I leave it in case you want to see more pictures of Santiago.

OK, I'm going to tell them about the Yaks. I mentioned it once here, the Yaks thingy. I said I was going to tell it, so it's coming in this one... you didn't wait that long for it, did you?

The point is that on the road trips, very long and tiring, we had to entertain ourselves with something. Sometimes we would fall asleep (you know, snoring, drooling, playing pranks on us), or sing, or play. Other times we'd get drunk... (this didn't happen as a general rule)... The driver was of course not allowed to do this... he had to drive. But our drunkenness helped him to stay awake.

Getting to the point... On one of those trips, precisely to Santiago de Cuba, we had a game to form words and when we had to form a word related to an animal that began with Y, I said Yak. And nobody knew what it was. I explained that it was like a buffalo or a cow or a ruminant... I didn't know myself because I hadn't seen one live. It just sounded familiar from the story books I used to read as a child. Russian stories. The laughter was enormous when we started joking about it and including the word Yak in our names. So we were: Gio-Yak, Ana-Yak, Da-Yak, Jesus-Yak (our driver).

This is one of my favourite cities in Cuba. The mountains look so beautiful.

I remember that day I took as many pictures from as many angles as the roof allowed. And from there I got some images that I later published it in an article about motorcyclists in Santiago de Cuba. Motorbikes are widely used as taxis there.

Well... I think that's enough chitchat for today! I would like to participate with these photos in the #Monomad Challenge. 😉

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