Ricochet: Cuba, with the Sea Turtle Conservancy. June 26 to July 3, 2016

No sooner had I arrived back from sailing, when, at dinner with my pals, one of them mentioned that she was going to travel to Cuba for a week with the Sea Turtle Conservancy, and asked if I wanted to come along. Sure!! In less than a week, we were off!

Cuba has two currencies; one for the local people, and for tourists, the Cuban Convertible currency,
called CUCs ("kooks"). The exchange rate is 1:1 with USD, minus a 13% conversion fee.

Cuba is only 90 miles south of Florida. Our destinations were Havana, Viñales, and Maria la Gorda on the Guanahacabibes Penninsula, You can enlarge any photo by clicking on it.

The old cars from the 1950's...some call them Yank Tanks!

We arrived in Havana at Jose Marti airport, to a parking lot filled with 50 year old cars!

Images of Che Guevara, Jose Marti, Camilo Cienfuegos and other
Heros of the Revolution are common.

For the first two nights, we stayed at the beautiful and historic Hotel Nacional, which has hosted the rich and famous...

...including Winston Churchill, Ava Gardner, Johnny Depp, Errol Flynn, Mick Jagger and scores of other luminaries. This was the premier hotel of Havana in it's heyday before the Revolution in 1958.

The hotel is still glamorous in spite of the passage of time, with walnut paneled elevators and ornate brass mail slots, classic Cuban floor tiles, and elegant architectural details from the Jazz Era evident at every turn.

And of course, Cuba's classic cars. This beauty,with Che on the hood, is my favorite.

Crumbling mansions are everywhere, occupied by several families. Homes for all are provided by the government, part of the Communist promise to the People. The government now is more socialist than communist.

Belle Epoch, Art Nouveau and Art Deco architecture show the passage of time.

Old and new are piled on top of one another in Havana.

A decrepit mansion with its current occupant. These large houses are occupied by several families now.

Taxis lined up waiting for a fare. Many are in very good condition, in spite of the unavailability of authentic replacement parts. The Cubans have become very creative at jury rigging or hand-fabricating parts they need.

A side street in Old Havana. Laundry hanging out to dry is a daily scene.

A thought provoking piece of graffiti.

In Old Havana these ladies are licensed to dress up and pose for photos in traditional costume. For one CUC you can take a photo and get a big red lipstick kiss on your cheek!

Typical Cuban souvenirs include gourd or wooden instruments (which are used in local music all over Cuba), dolls, seed jewelry, wood and cow horn carvings, inexpensive tee shirts and Revolution hats featuring red stars and Cuban flags.

Cuban music is compelling...you can't keep still when you hear it. And you hear it everywhere! These men and others like them were performing on the streets of Old Havana. Great sound.

The Plaza Viejo in Old Havana. It has been refurbished with tourist dollars, and sculpture adds interest to the cobbled square. Many of these buildings are now apartment dwellings, and rooms are subdivided not only with added makeshift walls, buy vertically with loft-like structures. These are called "barbeques" since the top level is incredibly hot and airless!

A view toward the Cuban Capitol building, which was a copy of the United States Capitol building in reduced scale. Currently it is covered with scaffolding.

A view from a modern club called Azucar!, overlooking the Plaza Viejo.

Locals watching the tide of tourists flow by, along with the ever-present graphic of Che.

The massive El Morro fortress at the mouth of Havana harbor was built by the Spanish in the 1500's to guard against the raids of pirates and privateers such as Henry Morgan. Havana was a safe haven for the treasure fleets en route to Spain from the Panama with the rich silver of Potosi and golden treasure of Peru.

At night we went out looking for music. Others went elsewhere to listen to jazz, but I stayed on at a brightly lit and unlikely cafe where a band was totally jamming out with Cuban "Son" music.
It was brilliant!

Here's the band. We danced a conga line around the room, and when the set ended, Luis (in the green shirt) came over to talk to me. With little common language between us, we still made ourselves understood and had fun. Luis, on aging: "La vida es la vida".

The next day we began our bus tour. Here's the stately Hotel Nacional from the highway.

Newer architecture is fairly non-descript at best. At it's worst, it is of the Soviet Brutalist style.
It is well named, resembling a prison cell block.

Here is the old Soviet (now Russian) embassy, with walls and barbed wire fences. I had to shoot quickly or through the window of the moving bus, so some photos are a bit blurred.

On our way to the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, our destination, we stopped to visit the eco-community of Las Terrazas, built upon the ruins of a colonial coffee plantation. The government has re-established native forests here, and has established eco-tourism hotels, camp grounds and hiking trails to capitalize on this beautiful landscape. It houses and employs scores of local people, and they have been provided with the things needed for a healthy community, such as a health center, movies, sports facilities, a family friendly night club, and food and and sundries markets.

My photo of a Cuban Trogon, the national bird and a relation to the Quetzal bird of Central America...

...and a much better image from the internet (passions4life.blogspot.com).
Birds are abundant in number and variety in Las Terrazas and the surrounding forest.

A view of the reforested area. The climate and soil type were favorable for coffee production, but the soil was too shallow and underlain with limestone bedrock, so the roots could not grow deep enough. Eventually the plantations were abandoned in the mid 1800's.

The forest has now reseeded itself and some of the adjoining land as well.

A reconstruction of the cook house behind the plantation "big house". Cooking was done in separate buildings to keep the heat out of the main house, and to isolate the risk of fire.

Beautiful ginger plants in flower. There were several fragrant varieties.

The flat areas on either side of the paved path are drying areas for the coffee beans. They were dried for about 30 days, then threshed, winnowed and sorted before roasting and shipping. Of course, the work was done by slaves.

Me and my new ride.

These guys were great. They ad-lib lyrics for the audience they are singing to; one of our group was Cuban American and they sang her a song that made her blush! They were humorous, and good musicians. The guitars are strung with six strings in sets of two, the top two sets are tuned an octave apart, like our twelve string guitars are. It makes a rich sound.

The former home of a doctor, in Pinas del Rio. Built in the 1920'as, he wanted to depict all the
different architectural styles he had seen in his travels. I think he didn't miss many.

These rigs are pretty common all over the country. People also ride horseback.

We arrived at our hotel, a dive resort at Maria la Gorda, on the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, which is a national park. The reef, waters, and land are all protected here. This is the venue for the work being done by the Sea Turtle Conservancy of Gainesville, FL, and their Cuban partners from the University in Havana. Their mission is to attach to the shells of nesting turtles satellite transponders which will help to track the travels of the sea turtles after nesting and help better understand the environmental needs and challenges these threatened species face.

Photo by David Godfrey, courtesy Sea Turtle Conservancy

For three nights, the group went to a dark and remote beach to attempt to locate turtles nesting. After nesting, the turtles were detained in a mobile pen while researchers cleaned the shell, attached the transponders with special epoxy, and allowed the epoxy to set before releasing the turtles. On the first and third night there were no turtles...but the night sky was brilliant with shooting stars. On the second night, two turtles were found. One had a shark bite out of her shell. They were named Julia (after our smiling Cuban research chief) and Esperanza (Hope).

Here are URLs for maps for the two turtles we satellite tagged in Cuba:

Esperanza: http://www.conserveturtles.org/trackingmap.php?id=144

Julia: http://www.conserveturtles.org/trackingmap.php?id=14

For more information on sea turtles and the work of the Sea Turtle Conservancy, go to:

www. conserveturtles.org

During the day, I went on two snorkel trips with the dive boat.

The water was pristine and clear. The reef was 5-6 meters deep and didn't have much vertical structure, but it still had a lot of fish varieties, sponges, and healthy corals.

A school of blue tangs cruised through the area, feeding on algae.

Want vertical structure? Just turn the camera sideways!

A blue chromis on the reef.

A rock beauty.

A cool mojito...One of Cuba's favorite drinks, with flavors of mint, fresh lime juice, and rum.

Kayaking and swimming in the cool morning.

After three days at Maria la Gorda, we headed for Viñales. We passed into tobacco growing country, where the world's finest tobacco and Fidel Castro's iconic cigars are produced. Here is a thatched tobacco drying shed. The thatched roofs can last 25-30 years.

Viñales lies in a lovely landscape of distinctive mountains of limestone karst.
The hills are riddled with caves.

Tobacco fields and drying sheds are everywhere. After the harvest, other crops such as bean and corn are planted.

Homes are also thatched.

We stopped to buy rum, and visited a facility where rum is infused with tiny green guavas and aged to produce a liqueur.

Here the liqueur ages....there is more than the Angels' share in the air here.

The next stop was a tobacco farm. Dagoberto took us inside his drying shed and showed us how the tobacco is first dried, then stacked and fermented for about four weeks under the flattened spaths of royal palm.

After fermenting for about a month, the leaves are ready to roll into cigars. Romeo y Julietas are the mildest, Cohibas are of intermediate strength and are favored by Fidel, and Montecristos are the strongest...Che's choice.

Dagoberto rolled a cigar and gave it to the group to try. Smooth!

Afterward we were invited into Dagoberto's home for coconut sweets and tiny cups of Cuban coffee, with an optional spike of rum.

The sun rising over Viñales, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All new building must be in the colonial vernacular, and old ones carefully restored. Tourists can rent rooms in private homes here, because there are few government-run hotels; and tobacco growers get a 10% cut of their crop to sell or use as they choose. A little capitalism has crept in. The village is more prosperous than most we saw as a result.

A guajillo, or farmer, with his team of oxen. Oxen are used to plow throughout Cuba, since tractors cannot be imported due to the trade blockade by the American government. Not only will the US not trade with Cuba; none of our trading partners can either. As a result, imports have been strangled such that only Russia, Venezuela, and China and a few other countries will export to Cuba. Cuban farmers look forward to the day when they can buy a John Deere!

Traveling on to the suburbs of Havana, and Ernest Hemingway's home at Finca La Vigia. He lived here until just after the Revolution. When he left (at the request of the US government), he donated the house and contents to the Cuban People, whom he loved and admired and they in return. They have preserved it just as Hemingway left it. Visitors cannot enter, but the windows are left open for viewing.

The elegant home is filled with books and art....

...and big game hunting trophies. It is said that Mussolini wanted to buy this Lesser Kudu trophy from Hemingway...who rebuffed him, telling him to go hunt one himself.

Here is the famous boat "Pilar", which featured in Hemingway's books about marlin fishing and patrolling for German submarines in WWII. Islands in the Stream was written at Finca La Vigia.