The Santiago is said to be the cultural capital of Cuba - Lonely Planet describes it as 'a frenetic, passionate and noisy beauty'. It is a fairly sprawling city of just under half a million people. It is said to have closer ties to Haiti and DR than Havana, it is also where the majority of the revolutionists during the Cuban history have come from - both Jose Marti and Fidel Castro come from Santiago and both were laid to rest here. Our guide book warned us to expect to be hustled by touts relentlessly, but not be put off exploring this fascinating city - so we prepared accordingly……
We were expecting to collect our fuel and then go and meet Noel our driver, to take us to Santiago. However, when Andrew went ashore at 8am the fuel hadn't arrived and the new dockmaster thought Jorge had gone to get it - ah well we decided to just go with the flow and waited for Noel.
Noel, also has great English and a blue Moscowitz (spelling???) car - kind of like a Lada with less of the embellishments. The car is 34 years old and used to belong to his father - it was neat and tidy. We hopped in and chatted to Noel on the 20 minute drive to the City, he dropped us at a 'Cadeca' to change some money and then agreed to meet us later at the Hotel Casa Granda - no need to pay until later. We learned that only 38 people in 1000 own a car in Cuba - motorbikes are common, as are horse and carts.
A Cadeca is a government moneychanger, this is the official way to change money in Cuba and it's really easy. You just give them the money and show your passport and for US$ you get 0.85 to $1 in Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUCs), there's also a local currency the Cuban local pesos (CUPs) so we also changed some of our CUCs to CUPs. We had heard you can get better rates for US$ on the black market but this was easy and having just arrived it felt safer to be changing a chunk of change behind the security guards in the Cadeca.
Cashed up we went for a stroll and found ourselves at the beautiful Plaza de Dolores. There's a lovely park area, a cathedral and a few restaurants so we took a breather and enjoyed our first Cristal - one of the local beers. The restaurant was actually a government restaurant so two beers and two sandwiches cost us 8 CUC. This is the gay area of Santiago and many colourfully dressed, neatly presented guys were strolling around. There's music playing everywhere and it's pretty noisy with motorbikes, however we felt very safe; actually one tout only approached us all day.
We headed up town to the Plaza de Marti, a pedestrian street with small shops selling a handful of items or simple food - mostly shoes, pets and donuts. At the Plaza we found hoards of people sitting around in the shade using the wifi. Internet in Cuba is accessed by using a scratch card and logging on in wifi areas - mainly hotels, the internet organisation buildings and public squares. Plaza de Marti is a former parade ground where the Spanish used to execute people publically for revolutionary activities.
We strolled though the second pedestrian street, with some tourist stalls and ice-cream vendors (apparently a new thing in Cuba). We found our way to the Bacardi Museum - not a rum museum but a collection of artefacts collected by Emilio Bacardi Moreau. Jorge had told us that the mummies in the museum had been smuggled into Cuba as salted beef.
Walking through the sights we found ourselves back at the centre of town the Parque Cespedes, which is a stunning square, flanked on all sides by colonial buildings including the beautiful Cathedral, City Hall, Grand Hotel and Museum. From here we explored the musical Calle Heredia, calling in at Casa de la Trova - a traditional poetic singing songwriting house, where the music and dancing was great. We ended the touristy part of the day with a couple of Mojito's on the roof terrace of the fantastic Hotel Casa Granda.
On our way to meet Noel we ran into one of the Customs guys from the marina who offered to buy us some special rum, noting he'd get a small bottle if he made the purchase. That sounded okay to us so off he went returning with the bounty - win win! It made us think about a few different experiences we have had with Customs - in Australia they wanted to buy drugs from us (well it was only Stugeron for sea sickness), in Barbados they wanted us to buy them booze, and now they are buying us the booze….. whatever next??
The next job was a bit of provisioning. Noel took us to the public market, where we bought potatoes (apparently hard to get in Cuba), tomatoes, onions, bok-choi, pineapple, aubergines all in the local CUPs - totalling less than $5. He translated as we worked around the different stalls and had a lot of laughs. Then to the liquor store around the corner where Noel said we could buy really cheap rum suitable to trade with fishermen. The guy in the store was a real character and wanted to take our photo - so we took his too and I got a kiss!
Our final provisioning stop was the bakery - which was actually right next to Noel's house. So after we picked up a bag of rolls for practically nothing, Noel invited us in to meet his Wife, Barbara. We spent an hour chatting and sharing stories in their living room, where neighbours just walk in and out and the music was blaring outside. Noel has two daughter's, one who is 16 we saw briefly and and the other is married and living in Belgium with her husband - huge photos of the girls hung on the wall - they looked like supermodels; totally stunning girls.
We returned to the marina, dropped off our goodies and then headed ashore to the hotel next to marina for a cold beer. There we met up with the crews off two Dutch yachts - Ebijmar and Bandos both of whom have spent time in Cuba before and had some great stories.
What a brilliant, funny and interesting day we had - Santiago has a special vibe and on top of that Noel really made our day a bit different. There was no extra charge for all the deviations we made on the way home or his time translating and helping us - we can't thank him enough.
That night the wind picked up and it was pretty gusty in the bay, I think that was good for keeping any harmful pollution off the boat, but we really felt like the boat ahead of us was a bit closer than before….. Andrew got a call from Jorge to say he had our fuel cans, so we did that job while monitoring the yacht. Then just as we were finishing off it started drifting fast towards us - I started our engine and grabbed the refuelling gear away while Andrew called the marina. We quickly got our anchor up just before the French yacht drifted onto where we were without snagging our anchor - phew that was scary! Luckily for them their anchor reset before the reached the shore, however the marina did take a boat out to check on them. Never a dull moment in this life.
We enjoyed lunch ashore, went to check out with Jorge and receive our cruising permit from the harbour master. It was only now we paid up - 75CUC each for our visas, 55 CUC for clearing in fee and 12 CUC per night anchored in the bay.
We sailed out of Santiago about 4pm for an overnight sail to Marea de Portillo. We felt a bit sad to leave this great spot as there is so much to do and see in this truly amazing city, however we were not comfortable to risk another night with the potential for damaging Askari with the pollution. I would definitely return to this part of Cuba and this has been one of our most special destinations since we started on this trip.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment