Cuba libre cont'd
Trip Start
May 13, 2009
1
45
85
Trip End
Sep 07, 2009
Cienfuegos,
Cuba
Friday, July 17, 2009
After 3 days in Vinales we were more than ready to move on. We got the bus to Cienfuegos which had been recommended to us by the New Zealander we met in Havana. Actually we ran into him again in Vinales. Since it is on the coast, (well we thought it was), we thought we might finally get some beach action. I hadn't even had a chance to use the bathers I bought in Ecuador in the salt water yet!
The bus dropped us a little outside of the main centre of town and there were no locals with casas trying to catch our attention so we started following the backpackers who had guidebooks in their hands. We figured they would at least have a map! After about 200m a man with a business card approached us offering us a casa, it was dirt cheap and centrally located so we took it
Rum fruitbox
. Turned out to be very nice too! Air con, proper bed with towels! Luxury. The owners very very nice too and although they gave us the hard sell on the dinner again we managed to bargain the price down. Very glad we did too as the dinner was the best food we'd had in a while and we got fresh mango juice for breakfast. Ooooooo, mango mango mango. Cienfuego wasn't quite a complete hole, but nor was it far off. Although it did have a lot more shops than Vinales, there wasn't anything to buy in them! We could get bottled water, rum and mixer... oh, we did find some chocolate :) We got hassled quite a lot to get in the cyclos or horse drawn taxis, but we wanted to walk. Both to kill time and to justify all the shitty food we'd been eating.
The second day we headed to the bus station to try and get to the nearest beach. Our casa ownder told us it was 14km away at Rancho Luna. We found a ticket window that said the destination in it, but when we wree lining up some bloke in a uniform came and told us that we couldn't buy tickets there, we had to go down to Viazul (tourist bus section). I pretended not to understand hoping that we could just get a ticket anyway, but then some girl behind explained it all in English. "Because you are not Cubans, you can't get on this bus because it is only for Cubans". Great. So we went to Viazul but they didn't run buses to Rancho Luna. Of course!
Feeling pretty annoyed at the whole country we left the bus station and wandered out into the hot midday sun in our bathers, the perfect environment in which to become even more annoyed. We bitched about how many things we couldn't do in Cuba for a while, I admit
Our ´glasses´
. It was just so frustrating, we just wanted to lie on the beach! Who is that going to hurt? We walked about 3km out of town and past the stinky malecon. That was when we had the guys leaning out of their car trying to get our attention. We found a tiny beach!! It was packed full of locals and the water was full of bread for some reason, but it was a white sanded, aquamarine watered beach! Unfortunately, just as we found a shady spot and we starting to undress we were ambushed by an 18 year old boy who thought he might try and chat us up. We decided to go in one at a time so the other could watch the bags. The woman next to us there with her family nodded at us "yes, it's very dangerous". She had a bit of a chat with Rach in the water too which was nice. Meanwhile I was standing around with my Cubano leech trying my best to dissuade him from persisting in his quest to befriend us. I gotta hand it to him, he handles rejection well!
It was just awkward though as he was standing there watching us undress and basically just openly perving so we couldn't relax. We just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Just as we were leaving some guy with his horse drawn cart offered us a lift back to the town centre. We politely refused so he followed us for about 300m down the road alternating between nagging us to get in his cart and asking us questions about where we were from etc..
Chilling out on the patio in rockig chairs
. We finally convinced him that we seriously were going to walk back and he left shaking his head. Tut tut. Siesta time.
Cuba Libre time.
The morning of our last day we caught a cyclo out to see the old cemetery. It is where all the original Cienfuego mayors or whatever are buried. The woman showing us round spoke only Spanish so my translation may be a little off. A lot of it had been blown down by the hurricane last year. When the hurricanes hit the water from the coast comes inland and floods the cemetery as well so a lot of the open tombs were filled with scungy sea water. There had been some attempt to recover some sections, but mostly it was going to ruin.
Seems like there isn't much money for restoration in Cuba, if something goes down, it stays down. Last year there were 3 hurricanes which devastated just about all provinces in Cuba. The reconstruction has been slow as they do not have enough resources to supply building materials etc. When we were in Vinales Sandra showed us a family that has been living in their kitchen (in Cuba the kitchen are separate from the houses because they use open fires to cook which smoke out the room) for the last year with no end in sight. They are waiting for the government to give them the materials to rebuild their house.
Bus to Trinidad - surely we can find some beach there???
