Cuba - Lonely Planet [257]
TRUCK
Private passenger trucks leave from the Ferro Ómnibus bus station adjacent to the train station heading in the direction of Morón and Camagüey. Check the blackboards for current details.
Getting Around
CAR & MOPED
The Carretera a Morón gas station (Carretera de Morón) is just before the bypass road, northeast of the town center. The Oro Negro gas station (Carretera Central) is near the bus station.
You can park safely in front of the Hotel Santiago-Habana overnight.
Cubacar (Hotel Ciego de Ávila 20-01-02; Carretera a Ceballos; Terminal de Ómnibus 22-51-05) can help with vehicle rental for around CUC$70 per day. The branch at the Hotel also rents out mopeds for CUC$24 a day.
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VíAZUL DAILY DEPARTURES
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LEATHER ON WILLOW
In 1895 a young Winston Churchill, fresh from a journalistic posting in Havana, lamented whimsically over what might have been had the British held onto Cuba after the short-lived occupation of 1762–63. In romantic undertones he imagined a ‘free and prosperous’ Anglo-Saxon colony that ‘sent its ponies to Hurlingham and its cricketers to Lords.’
But the cricket wasn’t to be – at least, not immediately. After dispatching the Spanish in 1898, Cuba spun inexorably into US orbit and Churchill’s dream of hearing the thud of leather on willow was quickly replaced by the heavy swish of a baseball bat. Or was it?
Ingrained in the culture of its English-speaking neighbors, cricket never strayed far from Cuba’s shores. Entering the island through the back door in the 1920s, the game first took root among immigrants from the cricket-playing nations of Jamaica and Barbados who came to work on Cuba’s booming sugar plantations. Creating their own teams, the new arrivals were soon competing in prestigious local tournaments, the most important of which was an annual cricket festival held in Baraguá in Ciego de Ávila province on slave emancipation day every August 1. In 1952 Cuba even staged its first international against an all-star team from Jamaica.
But in the 1960s and ’70s, under the direction of new leader and one-time baseball protégée Fidel Castro, Cuban cricket almost died out. The revival came in 1998 after Leona Ford, the daughter of a cricket-playing Barbadian immigrant, proposed a six-week cricket-coaching course with representatives from Trinidad and Tobago. Interest quickly spread and, within a couple of years, cricket had gained the support of a Cuban government anxious to re-emphasize its Caribbean heritage in a post–Cold War world.
Today there are almost 4000 practising cricket players in Cuba and the country is an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC). In February 2007 the Cubans were invited to form their own national team, which competed for the first time against guest teams from England, Jamaica and India in Havana.
Meanwhile, in sleepy Baraguá, the annual August cricket tournament continues to spin its esoteric magic just as it has done for the last 80 years.
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TAXI
A taxi ride to the airport will cost around CUC$12; bargain if they’re asking more. You can book a cab at Hotel Ciego de Ávila or find one in Parque Martí. A one-way ride to Cayo Coco should cost in the vicinity of CUC$60.
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MORÓN
pop 59,194
Morón is a dull town with a wealth of interesting sights surrounding it. Situated about 40km north of Ciego de Ávila across a flat sea of sugarcane, it acts as a kind of base camp for people heading north toward Cayo Coco, as well as a hometown for the hundreds of Cubans who work there.
Founded in 1643, two centuries before provincial capital Ciego de Ávila, it’s known as the Ciudad del Gallo (City of the Cockerel) island-wide for a verse about a cockerel that continued to crow after being defeathered. The offending bird stands recreated in bronze