Road to Cienfuego

Cienfuego, Cuba
Saturday 14 January 2012

Customs House

What are those monuments along the road, we wonder. Then we know. They commemorate the great victory of the Cubans against the dastardly American invaders in April 1961. This is the road to the Bay of Pigs, Bahía de Cochinos. We are in a shared taxi ride, driving from Viñales to Cienfuegos. A Dutch couple in Viñales wanted to go to Playa Girón, in the Bay of Pigs, so we were picked to make the detour with them en route to Cienfuegos. Reading my Lonely Planet as we drive along, I realize we have missed an opportunity. There is much more to the Bay of Pigs than monuments to April 1961. Playa Girón, the beach where the majority of the invaders landed, is one of the best beaches and diving locations on the south coast. There is also the Península de Zapata, a vast, uninhabited swampland, coveted by naturalists. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to visit the Península unless you stay in the area and make private arrangements. None of the tour companies, as we found out later, run excursions into the area. Our cell phone is not working well enough for us to telephone the Casa Particular we have reserved in Cienfuegos and cancel. We are stuck with our original plan. We let the Dutch couple off at their hotel at the beach and continue on.

Our Casa Particular is one of several old Spanish row houses lining the Paseo del Prado, an elegant pedestrian walkway in the middle of a divided road, the same as the Prado de Martí in Havana. Sra Julia is there to greet us and usher us into her home. A series of salas (living and dining rooms) with 16 ft high ceilings, lead to an inner courtyard, off which is our room. We actually have a bedroom, a kitchen-living room and a bathroom for our use, but we will not be making our own meals. We will have breakfast and most dinners at the Casa. The courtyard, with an outdoor kitchen at the far end, is full of potted plants, a few chairs, a hammock and laundry lines. We unpack and head out to explore the town.

Horse carts and buggies were the main mode of transportation in Viñales and it is not much different here; with the addition of lots of bicycles. There are also horse drawn wagons with seats along each side that serve for short trips around town. They line up near the bus station and take off once they have at least eight passengers. There are also lots of classic cars acting as taxis, but relatively few private cars, so traffic is not an issue in Cienfuego. Neither is it a problem on any of the roads we have driven on so far.

The Parque de José Martí, just a few blocks from our Casa, is the center of most of the architecture that earned Cienfuegos a Unesco rating. Founded in 1819 by a French émigré from Louisiana, the coming of the railroad in 1850 made the town wealthy. Local merchants built large public buildings and a theatre around the Parque and built elaborate homes in an eclectic version of Neoclassical architecture. Every day multiple tour buses park and let the tourists out to explore the town for a few hours and drive on to the next center. Most tour groups don’t stick around long, meaning the evenings are very quiet in Cienfuegos.

We admired all the buildings around the Parque; the Tómas Terry Theatre, the Cathedral, Government house and in the park, fountains, a small Arc de Triumph and of course, a statue of José Martí, who became a martyr for the revolution when he was killed by the Spanish in a 19th C battle. A few blocks away was a a lovely Customs building at the head of the bay, reputed to be one of the most beautiful natural bay in Cuba. All that was lacking was a boat to take tourists on a scenic trip around the bay and enjoy a sunset dinner. That amenity is not yet available. We returned to walk along the pedestrian mall on that stretches several blocks, lined with small shops, displaying meagre goods, and side walk restaurants. We stopped to have a pre-dinner Mojito isitting by the swimming pool in the lovely Hotel la Unión. A Mojito or a Piña Colado either before or after dinner is a nice habit we are acquiring.

The next day we took a long walk along the Malecón, a boardwalk that runs next to the bay on the way to Punta Gorda, Cienfuegos upper-class suburb full of well-kept clapboard houses and rococo mansions. The most elaborate was the Palacio de Valle, built in 1917 with lots of Arabic influences. It is now a restaurant, and was serving lunch to a tour group when we were there. Part of the property was sold off in the 1950s to Batista’s brother who erected the ugly concrete Hotel Jagua. Favoured by tour groups, it apparently is very well appointed and deserving of its four stars.

We had lunch at the Club Cienfuegos, once an exclusive yacht club, now a restaurant with lovely views of the bay. You can charter boats from their Marina, with or without a captain, for a week of sailing the waters of Cuba. Unfortunately they did not have cruises where individual tourists could sign on. Another large tour group was having lunch there so Ray and I took a table on the balcony, a better choice as far as we were concerned. The tourists were mostly Americans, on a National Geographic tour, one of a few companies able to fly directly to Cuba from the United States.

The beach at Rancho Luna, 18 km south of Cienfuego, sounded enticing. We considered staying there for a few days but were advised to try it out for a day first. A tour company we consulted suggested we take the local bus, costing $1 CUC each, to the beach as the alternative was a taxi. We showed up in the morning, reserved a seat on a big Viazul bus to Trinidad on Saturday, and inquired about the bus to Rancho Luna. We were directed to Bay 4, where shortly after a vehicle resembling a jerry-built camper van with big bus-style windows along the sides, pulled up. As tourists, we got preferential treatment. We, and a few other tourists, were allowed to get in the bus and choose seats, from the few available, before anyone else boarded. This was good. Close to the departure time we were joined by the rest of the passengers, who had been waiting in the departure room inside. The object of Cuban public transportation seems to be to fit the maximum number of passengers into the minimum space. We were fine in our seats and less than ½ hour later we were let off at a beachside restaurant in Rancho Luna.

A stretch of coral sand, backed by a line of palm leaf palapas, awaited us. We laid my sarong on the sand beneath one of the palapas, as there were no chairs for rent, and went for a swim. The sand was a little coarser than Cayo Jutias but the coral reef, very close to shore, was similar. Most of the corals had been destroyed, most probably by a hurricane, but there were still some interesting fish swimming around. Ray spotted what was either an eel or an eel fish, another tourist saw a Sting Ray and I saw one of those poisonous Lion Fishes. I didn’t try to touch it. We had a relaxing day, swimming and walking on the beach, but one day was enough. We move on to Trinidad today, Saturday.