Cuba

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Early March found us back at the Breezes Jibacoa in Cuba. We're back with my brother Paul and is wife Judy who fly in from Nova Scotia. Again, this trip has been arranged locally from St Marys by Becky, our travel agent..

Adding to the group is their friend Jerry from Hamilton who stays at a (cheaper) next door resort. Jerry has brought a bicycle with him and he leaves it behind as a gift for the staff --  a good working bicycle would be an asset for the poor Cubans. Jerry had found the bike abandoned back home -- or at least it was abandoned on the street for quite some time before he broke the chain, took it home and reconditioned it. I think it was a good idea.

We're back, in part, because we found snorkeling off the shore of the resort so great last time. This week the weather is very windy making the water rough. To top that, the wind seems to be blowing in every Portugese Man O'War jelly fish in the area. They're all over the beach and in the water making snorkeling impossible. You don't want to get anywhere near one of these jelly fish! Their sting is quite painful and will leave a scar. So, we didn't get in the snorkeling we had planned.

Much about the resort remains the same. There was the pig roast on the beach, we did the hike up the escarpment above the resort with Mini-Mike and visited the same farm. There were daily events to keep us amused by the beach bar -- like a sand hockey game for all the Canadians. There were the evening shows by the pool area. We had lots to drink, good food, some days by the pool and some nights playing Euchre. We had fun. Kate and I even tried some Spanish lessons so I don't repeat the "Mucho gusto!" experience.

We explored a bit beyond the resort on a walk by ourselves one day. There's a run-down Cuban camp ground (Base de campismo, Playa Amarilla) just to the east along the coast. It seemed to have been abandoned. There was no one around, the pool was empty and the tiny cabins were stripped of anything salvageable. The shore was rocky so it would have been hard to enter the water there. The photo above is a fisherman and his catch we encountered along the way. He had a wet suit and snorkeling gear. I believe he was spearing the fish. He had a nice catch which might have ended up as someone's dinner at our resort that night.

Last time we were here we went into Havana on a bus tour. This time we took tour to the town of Mantanzas to the east, swam in a cenote/cave and then had a small boat trip up the nearby Canimar river to explore the grounds and animals at La Arboleda (the Grove). There we crossed the river on a hand pulled raft to a hillside farm where we had our lunch. On our way to Mantanzas we stopped at a restaurant, the Mirador de Bacunayagua, for a Pina Colada (fresh pineapple and coconut) and the view of the high bridge crossing the valley below.

Mantanzas is an important city with colonial buildings -- they're not as well restored as in Havana but impressive non the less. In Liberty Park there's a nice bronze statue of the poet Jose Marti on a pedestal with a young woman breaking free of her chains below. I'm not sure if that's in reference to independence from Spain or the more recent Viva La Revolucion!  I suspect it's the former. We spent some time wandering the streets, checking out old cars and motorbikes. There's more to see but this was only a brief stop.

After the town we stopped briefly at the Coral Beach to the east. There is supposed to be some good snorkeling here but the water was too rough to even think of getting in. After that we did have a swim in a cave which was similar to the cenote experience we had on the Mayan Riviera. And we did get a river swim in as well.

The boat trip started with some native dancers at the Rio Canimar Parc. I have no idea if these really are natives but they were dressed up in feather headresses, loin cloths, body paint and not much else to look like them.

On the boat trip there were some musicians playing music. One fellow had an oddly strung guitar. It was a six string guitar but the strings were arranged as three pairs (the way one would pair strings on a 12 string guitar). He could play almost anything, very accomplished. He used a pick which he kept on a long string attached to the guitar in case he lost it. There's another gift idea if you're travelling to Cuba -- bring picks and guitar strings.

We did have a swim in the river on the boat trip. I guess the alligators we saw at the Grove weren't around.

Anyways, enough said. It was good to get away from the snow and cold of winter in Canada, good to visit with family and friends, but a bit disappointing that we weren't able to swim as much as we had hoped.

[Update 2020/05/10 the resort is now called Memories Jibacoa]