The weather was idyllic as we cruised along the south coast of mainland Cuba in late March. November to April is the dry season in Cuba, bringing warm sunshine during the day with relatively low humidity and refreshingly cool breezes during the night. From May to October, the wet season, the weather becomes hot and steamy and fraught with mosquitoes and thunderstorms. 
     Our next port, Casilda, marked the beginning of the Golfo de Ana Maria and the Archipelago de los Jardines de la Reina, or Gardens of the Queen. According to Nigel Calder's Cuba: A Cruising Guide, this area is remote and unspoiled, and "there are few areas in the Caribbean as untouched as this."


Lush hills embrace the ancient city of Trinidad on Cuba's south coast
 Bunny Thompson photos

By Bunny Thompson

 

us through the impressive museum located in a corner of the old building, now a public school.  Following the failed attempt, Castro was tried for treason in Santiago de Cuba and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. It was at this trial when a young lawyer, Fidel Castro, delivered his famous speech, "History Will Absolve Me," which was later covertly released as the political manifesto for the continuation of the revolution. Castro was released from prison fifteen months later.
     This revolutionary movement, called the "M-26-7" in reference to the failed attempt on 26 July at Moncado Barracks, began again in December 1956, when the exiled Fidel Castro and others landed on the shores of Cuba near Santiago de Cuba.
     Casilda is a very small, but busy fishing port. We anchored just beyond the docks in an area heavily traversed by a fascinating fleet of fishing boats. Small wooden dories anywhere from 10 to 15 feet sported short masts, usually a rough tree trunk, with an assortment of triangular sails ranging from wrinkled and worn canvas to bright blue plastic tarps. At sunrise the dauntless fleet with one to three fishermen aboard each boat gingerly rowed past our boat and set their meager sails for fishing grounds beyond our vision.
     In the evening, as we sat in the cockpit drinking the last of our sundown cocktail, the little boats ghosted back into the harbor with their catches. A friendlier, more jovial crowd could not be found with each crew waving or stopping by to show their glittering prizes in the shallow hold of the wooden dory bed.
     From Casilda, we walked about four kilometers to the historic colonial city of Trinidad, another UNESCO World Heritage site in Cuba. Hernan Cortes recruited people from Trinidad, then departed from the nearby port to conquer Mexico in 1519. A "town of museums," Trinidad reminds us of old world Europe with its narrow stone streets lined by baroque-style buildings enriched with ornate carvings and small courtyards filled with flowering trees, chickens,  and camaraderie.
     Salsa music wafted through the hot afternoon air and filled the entire city with a poetic melody of history and art. The view from the top of the steeple of the San Francisco de Asis, now the Museo Nacional de la Lucha Contra Bandidos, offers a stunning view of the Escambray mountains and the lush green banana plantation along the hillsides. 
     Golfo de Ana Maria is littered with hundreds of small mangrove cays bordered by a long substantial reef guarding the Archipelago de los Jardines de la Reina. We saw very few boats as we made our way through the passes traversing from the deep water outside the reef to the sheltered cays inside the archipelago. It was almost five o'clock as we motored through the narrow channel of Pasa Cachiboca and into a lagoon surrounded by small mangrove cays. We were surprised to find three other boats anchored in this remote lagoon.
      Soon after dropping the anchor, a weather-beaten wooden dory with two
equally weather-beaten Cuban fishermen rowing with crudely carved oars arrived alongside. Two of the boats were lobster fishing vessels hailing from the nearby port of Santa Cruz, and the third boat was a sportfishing boat bringing tourists from Hotel Tortuga on Cayo Anclitas to fish for bonefish and tarpon.
     An avid fisherman, my husband Mark immediately grab his fly rod and headed for the shallows of the nearby cays. Just before sunset, two of the hotel guides stopped by to offer  suggestions to improve his chances and give him three handmade fly lures specifically for bonefish, tarpon and barracuda.
     While the fishing excursion did not produce results, we did receive an evening visit from both the fishermen and the guides, who clamored aboard bearing gifts of lobster and fish. We all went below to share a rum and exchange stories about our countries, our cultures, and the best methods for cooking lobster.
     Rounding the point at Cabo Cruz, we began the final leg of our Cuban cruise along the southeastern end of the island. This stretch of coastline provides a dramatic backdrop of the Sierra Maestra mountain chain terminating at the sheer cliffs along the coast, then dropping off into the abyssal depths of the Oriente trough some 7,000 meters below. 
      Here the katabatic effect is magnified cruising close to the steep shoreline, but further out to sea the Caribbean trade winds are more predominate. The calmest winds can be found at night; however, there are few safe ports, and many are dangerous to enter in the dark. We traveled during the day, taking advantage of the early morning northeasterly wind to push us along, tacking back into shore as the afternoon southerly winds picked up.

     At Marea del Portillo, about 30 miles east of Cabo Cruz, we met an eloquent gentleman originally from Latin America but who has lived in Cuba for more than 30 years. He admired our boat quietly at anchor in the harbor and accepted our invitation to join us aboard for dinner that
evening. He mentioned he owned several horses and offered to take us horseback riding into the mountains to a remote waterfall in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra with a wonderful view of the valley beyond. We quickly accepted. The next day our agile host led us along a winding path through small banana plantations and vegetable farms. We watched a farmer plowing a small patch of land on the side of the mountain with an oxen and plow as his shouts of directions to the two oxen echoed throughout the valley. Finally, we tied our horses to a tree and walked about a half mile through the brush until we heard the sound of water rushing through a narrow valley and smelled the sweet aroma of flowering trees lining the tropical oasis. The cascading waterfall set the stage for the spectacular panoramic curtain created by the rich, verdant Sierra Maestra mountains.
     We swam in the cool water below the waterfall and ate our pack lunches in awe of nature's dramatic theater. It could have been a scene directly from a tourist magazine for Hawaii.
     We ran into our first controlling restrictions in Cuba while in Chivirico. The small, well-protected lagoon is an excellent anchorage, and we were looking forward to exploring in the little village after a late afternoon arrival. The Guarda Frontera rowed to our boat to inspect our papers and promptly informed us we would not be allowed to depart the boat. For unknown reasons, Chivirico is a restricted area and, while you are welcome to anchor in the harbor, no boaters are allowed to depart for its shores. They were quite apologetic, explaining it was not their decision but a mandate from higher authorities. We ended their untimely message by watching the last of the Cuban baseball world series aboard our boat with the Guarda that afternoon.
     Our final port in Cuba was the renowned revolutionary city of Santiago de Cuba, situated about midway along the southeast coast. When Nigel Calder visited this city in 1996, he judged it to be "the filthiest in which we have ever been" with gobs of crude oil and tar from the nearby refinery filling the harbor.
     We found the harbor water had been cleaned of the oil and tar since the refinery no longer operates on a daily basis. However, after two days in the harbor, we discovered small orange dots all over the fiberglass deck as a result of the fallout from a nearby cement plant. The air quality is definitely poor, and our lungs spoke loudly as we coughed anytime we went outside.
     That aside, Santiago de Cuba is a fascinating city. Known as the "Hero City of the Republic of Cuba," Santiago de Cuba has been a great influence for Cuba's independence. Under General Antonio Maceo, Cubans fought with Theodore Roosevelt at the Battle of San Juan Hill to gain their independence from Spain.
    Today, San Juan Hill is a park commemorating both American  Rough Riders and Cuban soldiers with statues, original cannons, and inscriptions defining the events of this battle during the Spanish-American War.  Also in Santiago de Cuba, the Moncada Barracks, the site of Castro's unsuccessful attack on the Batista government on July 26, 1953, is a must see.
     A young college student, who spoke wonderful English, graciously guided

 
Cruising Trinidad on Cuba's south coast
  Bunny Thompson photos

      We left Cuba to continue our cruising in the Caribbean by crossing the Windward Passage to the island of Hispaniola. We saw our first green flash as the sun melted into the Caribbean Sea with Cuba just off the distant horizon. It reminded me of a large billboard I saw on a street corner in Santiago de Cuba. Written across the Cuban flag in the background, it read Cuba! Con Honor y Dignidad or "Cuba! With Honor and Dignity." It is an undisputed affirmation displayed by Cubans. They are rightfully proud of their country, culture and independence. 

Footnotes on the Cuban experience 
What to bring when cruising to Cuba? We were told to bring soap and toilet paper to give to locals, which we found most appreciated. Other suggestions might include: books & magazines - National Geographic, sports magazines (particularly baseball), Spanish/English dictionaries, anything written in Spanish, particularly children's books; sports items - baseballs, baseball cards. Cubans love their baseball, and children play in the streets with only a stick and a rock or an orange; fishing/boating - fishing hooks (lots of 1/0 to 4/0 hooks), fishing line (15 to 40 lb. test line), plus any old sails or equipment no longer needed; clothing - any summer-type clothing is appreciated, particularly T-shirts and children's clothing; toys - we had the most fun giving packs of crayons to children we met, and balloons, hard candy, or small toys are appreciated; medicines - This is a tough one. We carried only general medicines such as aspirin, alcohol, etc. and didn't feel equipped to dispense any prescriptions. If you know a physician or an organization willing to sponsor a box of medications, keep it until you arrive at a smaller outlying community and take it to their local hospital. 
     Our impressions of Cuba? It is a wonderful, safe country to visit and cruise. We did not encounter a gestapo-type  police state in which people are suppressed or inhibited from speaking openly. We did find them to be well-educated and well-fed but with few, if any, luxuries. Their lives are sparse, but it is not the poverty experienced by many Latin American countries. The Cuban people have excellent health care but have
difficulty finding necessary medications.
     Open elections, a constitution, a National Assembly and trade unions are part of their government structure. Racial and class prejudice, prevalent during the Batista period, is nonexistent in today's Cuba. We saw blacks, whites, mulatto, and Spanish living in harmony as one people, a concept we can only dream of in the U.S. Cuba has one of the lowest infant birth mortalities and highest literacy rates in the world. Health care and education was the highest priority of the revolutionary movement. Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother and fellow revolutionary fighter, wrote in his diary on 17 January 1957 as he watched the remnants of a burning battlefield: From far off, the flames of freedom can be seen blazing on the barracks of oppression. One day, in the not-too-distant future, we will build schools on those ashes. 
     True to this conviction, most of the military barracks and bases of the Batista regime were converted to schools and hospitals, giving the rural people of Cuba these facilities for the first time in history. With the economic embargo imposed by the United States in the form of the Helms-Burton Act and previous U.S. political embargoes,  Cubans are restrained from making major economic gains. This U.S. embargo has been condemned by the United Nations General Assembly, the Canadian government and many Latin American countries.
     Typically, the Cuban government and Fidel Castro have rejected the free enterprise democratic society of the U.S. they call "imperialism." Perhaps now is the time for both sides to reconsider the bitterness of old  prejudices, recognize the converging political progress made in this ever shrinking world, and to sit together and discuss policies and practices that would be fair and equitable for all. Cubans are proud, independent people willing to work for a better life for themselves and for Cuba. It is unfair for a country of wonderful people to be restricted because of old political differences.
     Cuba! Con Honor y Dignidad! Amigos ahora y para siempre! Cuba! With honor and dignity! Friends now and forever!

 

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