Cuba - Lonely Planet [206]
Just beyond the Cueva is Punto Perdiz, another phenomenal snorkeling and scuba-diving spot with a smaller on-site diving concession. The shallow water is gemstone-blue here and there’s good snorkeling right from the shore. It costs CUC$1 to use the thatched umbrellas, beach chairs and showers, and there’s another decent restaurant.
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HOTELS
Villa Playa Girón (Cubanacán; 98-41-10; s/d all-inclusive high season CUC$33/66; ) On a beach imbued with historical significance lies this rather ordinary hotel – an all-inclusive although, with its spartan bungalows and spatially challenged dining room, it rarely feels like one. Always busy with divers, the villa is an unpretentious kind of place with helpful staff and clean, basic rooms that are often a long walk from the main block. The beach, however, is invariably a mere 50m dash away, though its allure has been spoiled somewhat by the construction of a giant wave-breaking wall.
Getting There & Away
The reliable Havana–Trinidad Víazul bus makes two scheduled daily stops in Playa Girón (one in either direction). You must wait on the main road next to the entrance road to the Villa Playa Girón. The bus for Jagüey Grande/Havana arrives at 6:15pm and the bus for Cienfuegos/Trinidad pulls in at 11:30am. Arrive a good 15 minutes in advance in case it’s early. You can buy tickets on the bus.
There’s a (very) early morning passenger truck to Cienfuegos. A taxi should cost approximately CUC$40 for the same trip. From Playa Girón to Playa Larga, the fare will be closer to CUC$20.
Getting Around
Havanautos ( 98-41-23) has a car-rental office at Villa Playa Girón or you can hire a moto for CUC$24 per day.
Servi-Cupet gas stations are located on the Carretera Central at Jovellanos and on Colón at Jagüey Grande, as well as on the Autopista Nacional at Aguada de Pasajeros in Cienfuegos province.
East of Caleta Buena (southeast of Playa Girón), the coastal road toward Cienfuegos is potholed and not passable in a normal car; backtrack and take the inland road via Rodas.
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Cienfuegos Province
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CIENFUEGOS
RANCHO LUNA
CASTILLO DE JAGUA
JARDÍN BOTÁNICO DE CIENFUEGOS
EL NICHO
THE CARIBBEAN COAST
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Bienvenido (welcome) to Cienfuegos province – or should that be Bienvenue? If Cuba has a Gallic heart, it’s hidden here in the lee of the crinkled Escambray Mountains; and if it has a Paris, it is enshrined in the finely sculpted provincial capital that glistens like a polished pearl beside the island’s best natural bay.
While Cuba’s Gallic infusions have traditionally come via Haiti, Cienfuegos’ lineage is traced back to Louisiana in the US and Bordeaux in France. Undaunted by fickle weather and impervious to the squalid conditions, the original French colonizers arrived in 1819. They brought with them the ideas and manners of the European Enlightenment, which they industriously incorporated into their fledgling neoclassical city with creativity and zest.
The setting helped. Caught dramatically between mountains and sea, the province’s southern coast is a minirainbow of emerald greens and iridescent blues that reaches its apex at El Nicho, an outpost of the Topes de Collantes Natural Park, and a fine place to cool off after a strenuous jungle hike. Lapped by the warm Caribbean, the surrounding shoreline is flecked with coves and caves, while out at sea teeming coral reefs beckon at Guajimico.
Though ostensibly white, Cienfuegos’ once-muted African ‘soul’ gained a loquacious mouthpiece in the 1940s and ’50s in one of Cuba’s most versatile musicians, the incomparable Benny Moré, a great-great-grandson of a king of the Congo who hailed from the small provincial village of San Isabel de las Lajas. Emerging from a brutal slave history, Moré wasn’t Cienfuegos’ only Afro-Cuban improviser, and close by in the settlement of Palmira, a handful of Santería brotherhoods continue to keep the