The morning was pretty rough. I lost my room keys and my phone about 20 times before breakfast in the last minute flurry of the final pack, dumping clothes over them and leaving them in the door. Classic move. Possibly (definitely) not helped by a few Havana Rituals (new discovery) the night before.
I threw down Isabelita’s international house of pancakes, fruit, omelette and palmed my ham and cheese sandwich for later. I say sandwich but it more closely resembled a squashed McMuffin. The coffee was a bit average but neither of the other two would take up the slack and god knew I needed it, so I downed basically the whole thermos like it was the vile pink medicine with aliens on it that mum and dad made me drink when I was a kid. A sacrifice with honour like the Mayans or the Zapotecs. At least I was only losing my tastebuds and not my heart.
Eventually, I emerged last from the room with my stuff packed. Shorty, grab our stuff. I resembled that crazy bag lady puppet in Labyrinth doubled over with rucksacks and backpacks. I looked a sight with one hand clutching my daypack and the other my bottle of Havana Especial. Hector, the bus driver, spoke nada English but I could tell he was impressed with the importance I assigned to his national beverage. We frequently shared a knowing glance and a raised eyebrow about rum, or Ron as it is known in Cuba. The glass bottle went straight into the bus cooler. No way was I risking breakage through my stuff.
The bus trip to the Bay of Pigs was the longest travelling day on the Cuban leg. On the way out, we stopped for a scenic view of the Vinales Valley which was one of Spielberg’s original choices for Jurassic Park. It looks like Hawaii – so lush and green. Next door was an awesome looking hotel. Apparently constructed in the 1990s to look like the 1950s. Mucho dinero. It was amazing!
Barbara played a documentary on the TV about the Bay of Pigs invasion that I am ashamed to admit I mostly slept through. But for those who think it was a pork spit roast on the coast, it was not. It was the Americans’ attempt to invade Cuban with US soldiers and disgruntled Cuban exiles in 1962. JFK just got into office and had no idea about it but it was a done deal before he won the election and he was not happy. A planned air strike to bomb the crap out of Cuba was called off in favour of the boats and soldiers and big guns approach. Basically, the US didn’t want a communist country on their doorstep and a few attempts to know Castro off with poisoned cigars and lovers had failed. They figured if they could take out the Cuban government that the people would rise up and embrace their liberators, dancing the salsa in the Plaza de Vieja or something.
As if. The most disgruntled Cubans against Castro were the ones standing there with guns! The others had been through hell and back with the revolutionary wars, their families dying in the fight to topple the American puppet dictator, Fulgencia Batista who did a runner with something like 50 million worth of Cubano pesos. Castro brought them universal healthcare and education. American control had seen many die of malnutrition and live in abject poverty. Communism was new. There was still hope.
Plus the Americans planned their invasion poorly, picking mangrove swampland that would be difficult to take. JFK didn’t know all of this when he okayed the invasion. It was doomed from the start. The soldiers landed, the Cubans got wind of their location and it was a bloodbath on both sides. Castro wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, shooting at light aircraft from an army tank. (He was a big guy – I have an image of him stuck in the turret after a big lunch of rice and beans.) The Americans eventually paid reparations for this tragic fiasco – one of the very few times they have acknowledged themselves to be in the wrong in this way. The Vietnamese got zip.
Monuments where they found bodies dot the road to Playa Larga, one of the battle locations of the Bay of Pigs. I couldn’t take any shots as the bus whizzed past the monuments and I couldn’t find any when the bus eventually parked.
We enjoyed a delicious lunch in the farmers style along the way at a new restaurant. No individual meats this time. Everything came out and we shared the lot. Soup, lobster, fish fillet, pork, beef, rice and beans of course! Delicious! At this point, some people were complaining about the Cuban food – oh it’s just meat, rice and beans. Well, that’s the blockade for you. They were doing the best they had. I found the meat delicious, particularly the cuts of grilled pork which was their staple. Don’t eat the rice and beans if you don’t want it. I was trying to avoid the highly processed white rolls in the morning and the endless supplies of guava, but I didn’t complain about it. It was just a week!
So as we left for the Bay of Pigs, my elongated stomach made me feel like a fat pig, having gorged myself!
At Playa Larga, I was hoping for at least a memorial to the thousands who lost their lives in the conflict. Nope. Not even a plaque. It is essentially a monument to fleshy gringo capitalism – spend some cash to swim in the choppy beach or the sinkhole, sit in a chair, buy souvenirs, hold a crocodile with his mouth taped shut, or swig a drink before the kiosk shut at 4. The entire group went swimming but me. Seriously- it wasn’t that hot and it was only an hour and a half. I preferred to watch this spectacle of tourists snorkelling where literally thousands of men were shot to death defending their homeland and wonder how it had come to this. I felt very strongly that it would be disrespectful to swim (plus I generally just don’t like it). It was undoubtedly the most disappointing stop of the trip.
We piled back onto the bus to continue the long drive to Trinidad. It must have been another 2 hours or so, upon arrival, Barbara generally preferred for us to drop our bags with only a few minutes (maybe 10 minutes) before a brief fact-packed orientation walk of the main bits of the small town and then dinner. This meant we could start the next day knowing where we were going and I didn’t have to wait three hours for everyone else to get up. This was always fine by me because I found it efficient but others didn’t like this so much and didn’t like the rush. Also, I wanted to go immediately after the late night so I could get back earlier to the hotel to sleep, but no. Everybody else cracked it at the thought of a tour so Barbara arranged to take a couple of us in the morning.
She walked us to a tapas place where the waitresses were all dressed like slaves because Trinidad has a proud slave culture stemming from sugar refineries. (More next post.) The one thing I wanted was out of stock, my water never came, my alternative empanadas were average at best, service was a schmozzle. Trinidad itself looked lovely through my bleary eyes though. I really looked forward to exploring it the next day after some shut eye!
We retired to Casa Mimi with a huge attraction of free wifi when the neighbouring restaurant was open! We took breakfast here the following day and my room was right next to it. You can just see the door on the left.
Stay tuned for an Adelaide girl hitting the baking hot cobblestones for cultural adventures and a Frappuccino that disgraced all things caffeinated.
HockTales: a Central American Adventure 