Cuba day 3, part 3 – An American Invasion, Is this Butlins? And Drifting Away.

The water felt good as the tiny waves broke against my ankles and my toes sunk into the soft white sand.  I put up my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, it was just past midday, and all I could see was the far shore of the crescent that made up this bay, shimmering in the distance.  I’d been in the sun for maybe five minutes, perhaps less, but already I felt the prickle of heat on my skin and the sensation of burning starting to sweep over my back.  Taking my hand down from my brow I rested it on my right shoulder and knew I would suffer later.   

Playa Largos is one of the two beaches that played host to the American 'Bay of Pigs' invasion in 1961.  What started off as a low-key covert action against the Castro regime mushroomed, thanks to the CIA, into a full-scale invasion backed by a 1400-strong force of CIA-trained Cuban exiles and financed with a total military budget of US$13m.  It was an unmitigated disaster, many of the invading force were left stranded on the beach and gave themselves up in a blink of an eye (allegedly) and then were returned to the US a year later in exchange for US$53 million worth of food and medicine.  Needless to say, the Americans didn’t try it again. What it did do was consolidate Castro’s preference for a Soviet economic partner and the rest, as they say, is history.  ‘Socialism or death’ became Castro’s defiant motif.  

Today, though, all is tranquil, the sea is as warm as bathwater and so clear I can see I am playing host to a school of tiny fish weaving in and out between my feet.  As I turn and look back to the beach I notice the chef from the little pink stuccoed café is sitting at one of his own tables, his head thrown back into a loud laugh and for a moment it looks like his hat will fall off.  It is low-season here and so he sits, with his friends and passes the time.  Beyond him is the low level building where the changing rooms are and a veranda, empty but for our party and a waitress who has tried to sell us some drinks and food.  It’s a small resort, scattered with small brightly coloured cottages all with the same rocking chairs and two-person table on the small patio at their front.  It reminds me of Butlins, England, circa 1970.  A Cuban holiday destination, not really popular with tourists and today, almost empty.  No bodies stretched out on the sand slowly spit-roasting, nobody out on the windsurfers.  Just a small party of Brits enjoying the beach and the sun.

The sand in getting to the sea made us hop and holler and we are pleased to make the water’s edge and plunge in.  The sun has bleached the view into shades of white and palest blue and sets the air over the water dancing.  Some seabirds squark loudly and we all turn around, trying to see what has spooked them. Spread in a line, we slowly walk out from the shore first ten meters and stop, then twenty an stop, then fifty and the sea is still only up to our thighs.  It feels strange to be so far from the shore and yet still not in deep enough water for swimming.  I remember that sharks can swim in only three feet of water and though its an illogical thought it sends a nervous shot of adrenaline up my spine and sparking around my brain.  But I want to swim and so I keep walking until my feet naturally lift from the sand and I strike out, with gentle strokes.  After a while I rotate until I am facing the sky and my arms and legs open out into the shape of a star.  I lay suspended, floating, with my eyes closed, and feel the rise and fall of the water and listen to the breaking of the waves not far away.  My closed eyelids are scarlet red in the harsh sunlight and I taste salt in the corners of my mouth.  I know I am drifting a little but I feel comfortable and safe in the embrace of the water around me. Then I open my eyes and slowly turn over.  The rest of the group seem quite far away so I kick my legs and head back to join them.  Back on the minibus we watch a Channel 4 video documentary film about the life of Fidel Castro.  I try to stay awake but feel myself drawn into sleep, my eyes dry and gritty.    

We stop for a short while at Cienfuegos, which sits in an enviable waterside setting just a little bit further around the natural bay.  The original French colonizers arrived in the early eighteen hundreds and set about making this a little bit of France and this can be seen in its neoclassical styling and colonnaded buildings which seem to sit confidently and serenely around its central plaza.  It was named a Unesco World Heritage site in 2005.  We have time for a stroll to admire the statue of José Martí, the Italian-influenced theatre on the north size of the plaza (sadly closed today) and the quality of the handmade ice-cream which we discover at a small ice-cream counter hidden behind a narrow door in an otherwise un-notable expanse of wall.  Inside, seated on plastic chairs pushed against peeling paint and lino floor, locals make satisfied noises as they dip into their treat.  They watch us with interested eyes, but nobody speaks.  The ice-cream is so good, so cold, so welcome in the heat of the day, we don’t talk either as we walk back to the bus. We just enjoy.

The drive to our hotel takes too long.  We are all tired now and the rolling hills and dramatic landscape gets hardly a comment.  As soon as we leave the town we start to climb and there are mountains cutting into the sky line in the distance.  The road winds and there is little other traffic. The view begins to open up and turning around I crane my neck and can just see Cienfuegos behind us, the sun beginning to slowly drop though the light on the sea is still dazzling.  I lean my head against the window despite the vibration but don’t really see the passing fields and small settlements of houses but I do notice a small child and a pig playing together in a garden.  Its six fifteen in the evening, my eyes are sore from swimming and my hair feel hard and tangled from the salt water. The light outside is starting to fade and the clouds behind the mountains in the middle –distance have the grey tint of rain.   I start to feel a little travel sick.

Cuba day 3, part 1 - Heading for the Caribbean, a million miles on the clock and thumbs up for the environmentalists.

The Autopista Nacional, or A1, is the main highway that cuts diagonally across the country from Havana in the north east down to Cienfuegos province and beyond.   Our destination today is ultimately the Hotel Villa Guajimico but before then we will stop for a swim in the warm waters of the Caribbean at Playa Larga and take a stop at French-influenced Cienfuegos.        

 The city is at full pace at this time of day, the roads are busy with in all directions and the old cars which are so iconic of Cuba pant and rumble waiting for the lights to change.   There are about 60,000 of these pre-1959 American cars left in Cuba, down from the 150,000 or so that existed pre the revolution but when the relationship between the US and Cuba began to deteriorate the megaliths of American car manufacturers had to halt the sale and trade of any further vehicles, parts of service.  Some of these cars have exceeded their design life by five, six or seven times and it’s not unusual for them to have clocked a million miles or more.  But the most impressive thing is the way they keep these cars on the road in the most ingenious manner whether that’s making brake fluid from tree sap or adapting a 24V Russian tank battery for a ’58 Chevy.  I salute the sheer resourcefulness and determination to not have their spirit quelled.    

Outside of Havana the countryside is vibrant and lush, down to the good rainy season they have had this year.  We pass one banana plantation after another and whilst the quality of the roads begin to deteriorate after about 20 miles from the capital the traffic is light and so we make good progress.  In the fields and on the edges of the roads large flocks of Turkey Vultures settle and take off and settle again.  They are ugly and ungainly birds and we see many hundreds of them over the course of the week. 

Cuba is a large island, the largest in the Caribbean at 1250km from east to west. At its narrowest point there is just 31km between the choppy Atlantic Ocean to the north and the more tranquil turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea to the south.  It is in fact a sprawling archipelago containing thousands of mainly uninhabited islands and keys.  It is shaped like an alligator and sits just below the Tropic of Cancer.  By the end of the week’s itinerary we will have just about managed to cover the central block of the country and will have travelled a lot of miles.  Like I said, it’s a big place and I am beginning to understand why Exodus Travel calls this week a ‘Taste’ of Cuba.

Our guide is pointing out various points of interest as we pass them and informs us about Cuba’s economic and trading history, about the buoyant and lucrative slave trade of the 18^th and 19^th centuries and then more about the countries fraught relationship with the USA.    This may be one of the major roads in the country but it doesn’t stop cattle from wandering nonchalantly across it and though the driver slows down and toots his horn it’s unfazed and just continues its steady progress across the lanes.   Water towers dot the landscape at regular intervals and gradually the flatness gives way to strange flat-topped hills which I learn are called mogotes.  I check my compass and note that we are heading SE.  As I sit looking out of the window at the landscape going by I think it reminds me a lot of Argentina.       

Someone observes that there are different coloured vehicle registration plates on the cars.  Sometimes they are black, sometimes blue, and sometimes white.  Infect, in Cuba the registration plate identifies the driver, not the vehicle and the range of colours and code might identify anything from your status in the ‘party’ to your nationality to what you do for a living.  Government vehicles have dark grey number plates with white lettering and determine where and when the vehicle can be driven and whether it can be used for personal as well as official duties.  The bosses of government owned companies get blue plates and they can only use their cars for getting to work and back.  Allegedly government inspectors wait along the highway out of town and in other high-traffic areas and flag down cars with blue plates to make sure the occupants aren’t using them for a trip to the beach. Army vehicles have red number plate and the pale-green plates are for vehicles used by the Economic Ministry. Black plates are for diplomats who don’t have to adhere to traffic laws and white plates are for Cuban government ministers of heads of state who apparently often drive like they have diplomatic immunity but technically don’t.  Most of the half-century old American roadsters that create the moving museum that is Cuba have yellow licence plates meaning they are owned and used by ordinary Cubans.  It’s an interesting system adopted from the USSR for which I see some minor merit, but to me, it just screams CONTROL and I am not sure where it fits in with the  Cuban socialist framework but to your Cuban in the street, it all just normal.

Small clusters of low-rise houses make up small villages from time to time and most the houses have small vegetable patches and are keeping chickens or goats or pigs.  There is the odd neighbourhood restaurant or pizzeria.  But I see very little wildlife though I scan the fields and skies and just once I spot a vulture sitting quietly in a dead tree.  The sugarcane industry is a significant part of the economy in Cuba along with citrus and mango plantations.  At the time of Columbus’ arrival in 1492 95% of Cuba was covered in forest by 1959 due to unregulated land-clearing that area had been reduced to 16%.  Large-scale tree-planting and protected parks have seen this figure creep back up to about 24% which perhaps doesn’t seem a wholesale reversal but actually puts them at the forefront of Latin Americans for this kind environmental planning.  The government is keen to confront the mistakes of the past and there have been massive clean-up projects in harbours and rivers around the coast.  Cuba might not strike you as being at the forefront of environmental innovation with its emission-belching cars and decaying infrastructure but in 2006 the World Wildlife Foundation named Castro’s struggling island nation as the only country in the world with sustainable development.  Perhaps the Americans should put that in their pipe and smoke it.