Cuba: Day 7 - Part 1

Cienfuegos had an influx of French from New Orleans after the War of 1812.  We were told its French influence could be felt, and if we had more time here, I might feel it more.  But it’s already time to head back to Havana,
  Before we leave, our tour team wants us to experience the municipal market.  For some Americans, it would be a rude awakening in hygiene, but I’m used to it from rural France and so are those of my co-travelers who have been abroad before.
       Still, the meat counter is not for the faint of heart, and I hate to imagine how it is in the heat of summer.  I hope they have ice, but there’s none in sight right now.

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One seller fluffs up his rice into neat little piles.  A veggie guy smokes over his vegetables, his ash perilously ready to drop off.  Portraits of Che, Jose Martí, the Castro brothers, and famous slogans such as “La victoria siempre” (victory, always) are painted on all the walls.  The vendors seem curious about our unfamiliar faces, but smile and exchange holas if we start things off.  I catch Ismaël buying tomatoes and other vegetables to take back to his wife in Havana.  He tells me they’re fresher here, and cheaper. 


I catch Ismaël buying tomatoes and other vegetables to take back to his wife in Havana. He tells me they’re fresher here, and cheaper.

His veggies safely stashed under the driver’s seat, Ismaël navigates us expertly down narrow, meandering roads and through small hamlets that are poor to the eye.  At one crossroads, charcoal is being made by burning down pyres of wood.  I’ve read about this practice in medieval France but never seen it actually being done.  This is obviously not a rich part of the country, and one where the Old Ways have been preserved.
  After not too long we arrive in Playa Girón, known to Americans as the Bay of Pigs.  Instead of a battleground, it’s strange to see all the brightly painted cabins that make it look like The Shore of my childhood, where people would live in tiny houses for a month or two in the summer.  We’re dropped off in front of the small museum that tells the sad story of the invasion, from the Cuban viewpoint.  It interests some of us, but personally - war not being something I enjoy - I prefer the other option:  walking along the beach, looking for shells.  There are very few, and National Geographic doesn’t allow people to remove them anyway, so I end up just wading in the warm turquoise water and enjoying the sun.  I wish we had time for a swim, but it’s on to lunch.

  We arrive at Hostal Enrique in nearby Playa Larga, where you can rent a room or just have a great meal.  Things work boarding house style here, with the food set on the table and you choose what you want.  And there’s a wide choice:  calamari, meat stew, the ubiquitous chicken and the equally ubiquitous beans-and-rice, plantains... typical Cuban fare.  Obviously there is live music, and Cindy somehow ends up on the maracas.  Here again, we go for a stroll along the beach until Ismaël is ready to drive on.  (We were supposed to tour the sugar mill where Fidel was headquartered during the ill-fated U.S. invastion and to take a ride on an old steam locomotive through the sugarcane fields, but it’s being repaired.  Instead we’ll visit Hemingway’s house, which sounds like a good fall-back plan to me.)

There are billboards crowing about the Yankees’ defeat in the Bay of Pigs fiasco along the road.  One marks how far “the Mercenaries” got... which certainly isn’t very far:  only 4 km, or not even 2½ miles.  Evidently planning was poor, the site ill-chosen and Castro’s infrastructure vastly underestimated.

  The entire length of our road back to the A1 highway runs along the Zapata Peninsula.  Similar to the Everglades, this vast marshland - 5,000 square kilometers, or over 1.5 million acres - got its name from its shoe (zapata) shape and is now a national park.  It’s the largest not only in Cuba but in the entire Caribbean.  In addition to its beaches, it offers wetlands for birdwatchers and is a wildlife refuge.  Before lunch, back at Enrique’s, Armando Herrero, one of the park rangers, told us about all that’s being done to protect endangered species, including crocodiles, and we see some of them as we travel along the road.
  During the long drive back toward Havana, we have time to take in all we’ve seen so far.

Zapata Peninsula