Caribbean Catamaraning and Cuban Police

Our third day in Cuba, we will attempt snorkelling…

Varadero doesn’t have very good off shore snorkelling so we arranged two different catamaran trips and a third trip by car to Coral Beach. The best snorkelling in Cuba is far from Varadero, off tiny islands and also at The Bay of Pigs–but as we were only in Cuba for one week this time, we decided to save the serious snorkelling for another trip.

* Some passages of this post were written in real time from my actual Cuban diary.

So much adventure today in Cuba. We had arranged to take a catamaran into the Caribbean with a guide to a coral reef about ½ h boat ride off shore—but alas, again the sea is too choppy today. He called a friend (professional diver) named Cocu who could take us to Coral Beach (down the island but closer to shore–no boat required).

Cocu picked up us in an ancient little green car from Korea with no seat belts and we were off to explore the real Cuba. Cocu drove us to his house in the neighbouring town as he had to pick up snorkel gear for himself. The Cuban neighbourhood was filled with goats, dogs, horse and carts, pastel cinderblock homes and old, decaying plaster Spanish colonial style apartments. Laundry hung in yards along with parrots in cages hanging from balconies.

Cocu drove past Al Cappone’s infamous private house and then on to Coral Beach. Coral Beach has a reef that is just off shore but the day had extremely choppy water. I’d not normally ever snorkel in such waves but Cocu is a diving expert, so I agreed to swim out to the reef with him and Peter. We were the only ones out today except for four local young Cuban boys/men who were snorkelling and playing the water near shore. The super strong current and big waves made me nervous--I’m a strong swimmer but I was having flash backs to the time I nearly drowned snorkelling in Hawaii after a rip tide took me way out to open ocean.

Peter and Cocu went way out to the other side of the reef but I choose to snorkel in the big waves for only about ten minutes and then fought my way in to snorkel closer to shore and hang out with my new Cuban friends (the Cuban young men were friendly).

On the way home, Cocu got pulled over by the police. After waiting in his little car for a long while Cocu informed us he had to go with the police as they were giving him trouble…saying he wasn’t licensed to have us in his car.  I said, okay but what do we do? I gazed own the long hot highway and prepared myself for a very long, sun-blistering walk back to Varadero. But Cocu informed us that we were all going to the police station—adventure! However, Cocu had agreed to take us the The Bay of Pigs  (2h drive away) to snorkel later this week and he didn’t want to blow our deal I suppose, because he exited the car and talked with the police forever and finally he got back in his car and told us they were allowing him to drive us back to the hotel first.

Finally, the sea was calm enough on two consecutive days and we were able to hire our friend Jorge to take us by catamaran out to sea to a few better snorkel locations. The sea gets choppy after one so we were up by 8:30 a.m. to make sure for smooth sailing and snorkelling. The sailing was bliss. We saw wild dolphins and a black marlin take flight from the water and literally dance on its tail across the turquoise sea surface at an unbelievably fast speed for at least 100 meters.

We became good friends with Jorge and I was able to practise diving deep while snorkelling as the small patches of reef were at least 30 feet below the surface. Jorge is an amazing snorkeler and dives super deep, swimming underneath coral bridges to find shells. Snorkelling proved to be an adventure in jelly fish pods (the 3″ clear variety). I’d suddenly find my face smack in a pod of about 100 travelling together. They were everywhere: all over my mask and touching my mouth. I’d swim backward fast to try and escape the glob. I hated having them all over my lips.