Cuba - Lonely Planet [141]
In the US the episode became known as ‘the Mariel boatlift’ and the refugee crisis that it created – along with the ongoing Iranian hostage affair – played a major part in Jimmy Carter’s diminishing popularity. Meanwhile, back across the water, Castro, in a shrewd act of damage limitation, embarked upon a series of fiery nationalistic speeches that lambasted the emigrants as lumpen (traitors) and vowed to continue defending the Revolution at all costs.
The Mariel boatlift is fictionally portrayed in the 1983 Brian de Palma movie Scarface, which starred Al Pacino in the role of Tony Montana, an unscrupulous cocaine-addicted marielito who is let out of a Cuban jail to run amok in Miami.
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Twenty-two kilometers east of Mariel on the Autopista is Playa Salado, a popular beach that swarms with locals in summer, but is largely deserted at other times. The shoreline is rocky instead of sandy, but there are 15 dive sites offshore, most of which are utilized via excursion groups from Havana. A few kilometers east of Playa Salado is the more developed Playa Baracoa. This is mainly local turf rarely visited by tourists except for adventurers taking the slow road to northern Pinar del Río province or transfers using the area’s small airport (which handles flights to Cayo Largo del Sur). Big dudes near the shoreline lean on old American cars supping beer while fishermen throw lines from the rocky shore. There are a couple of basic beach shacks that sell food.
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Isla de la Juventud (Special Municipality)
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ISLA DE LA JUVENTUD
NUEVA GERONA
EAST OF NUEVA GERONA
SOUTH OF NUEVA GERONA
THE SOUTHERN MILITARY ZONE
CAYO LARGO DEL SUR
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The Caribbean’s sixth-largest land mass is an erstwhile ‘Treasure Island’ that became a prison and, later on, a giant school. Name-wise it’s had as many incarnations as Castro’s had assassination plots: Siguanea, Juan El Evangelista, Parrot Island and the Isla de Pinos are just some of the titles that were used before arriving in 1978 at the more topical Isla de la Juventud, a reference to the thousands of students who studied here in the 1960s and ’70s.
A sleepy backwater even by Cuban standards, La Isla – as most locals call it – is rarely visited by main island tourists who prefer the more iconic attractions of Havana and the north-coast resorts. The situation isn’t helped by poor transport links; the daily flights here are often booked up weeks in advance, and the fickle boat service is a frustrating exercise in exasperation requiring a lot of patience.
Those that do battle through, often come to dive. The dramatic reefs off Punta Francés in the island’s sheltered southwest are deemed to be the best in Cuba, and perhaps even the Caribbean.
Downbeat Nueva Gerona is the island’s affable but unremarkable capital, a hotchpotch of sleepy squares and even sleepier streets where little has disturbed the afternoon reverie since, oh, 1959.
The Isla’s illustrious past residents include a colony of ambitious Americans (who tried unsuccessfully to make the island into an American garden suburb), a young José Martí, tens of thousands of African students, a few hundred crocodiles and prisoner number RN3859, better known to the world and history as Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz.
The largest island in the Archipiélago de los Cannareos, the Isla’s closest cousin is Cayo Largo del Sur, a tourist idyll famous for its turtles and large white (nudist!) beaches.
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HIGHLIGHTS
Beach Hike Trek the wide, white (sometimes nudist) beaches from Playa