Cuba - Lonely Planet [281]
CASAS PARTICULARES
‘Doña Nelly’ – Nelly Tamayo Vega ( 34-25-26; Lucas Ortíz No 111; r CUC$20-25; ) Doña Nelly runs a pleasant colonial house with rockers on the front porch. Setting the scene for a tranquil few nights in Las Tunas, she rents one room with a private bathroom separated from the bedroom. There’s a fridge and you can use some of the house’s facilities.
Carlos A Patiño Alvarez ( 34-22-88; Lucas Ortíz No 120; r CUC$20-25; ) There are two apartments here, each with their own kitchen, bathroom and sitting room. The upstairs one is brighter and has its kitchen on a terrace equipped with pots and pans.
HOTELS
Motel El Cornito ( 34-50-14; Carretera Central Km 8; r CUC$20) A Cuban-oriented place located outside of town near the site of El Cucalambé’s old farm. The annual country music festival takes place here. You might get lucky with one of the basic bungalows. Phone ahead.
Hotel Las Tunas (Islazul; 34-50-14; Av 2 de Diciembre; s/d CUC$28/40; ) What you see is what you get: unimaginative architecture, austere interiors, out-of-the-way location, dodgy restaurant and rooms that feel more like rabbit hutches than comfortable crash-pads. Then there’s the noise from the late-night disco.
Eating
PALADARES
For a small and little-visited city, Las Tunas has a couple of surprisingly good paladares.
Paladar La Roca (Lucas Ortíz No 108; meals CUC$7-8; noon-midnight) The pick of the bunch, for its luscious leg of lamb in gravy, a rarity in Cuba and something akin to a desert mirage in Las Tunas. Order it while you can.
El Bacan (F Suárez No 12; dishes 25-50 pesos) A peso place with big portions of comida criolla (Creole food) that mainly caters to Cubans.
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FLIGHT 455
Blink and you’ll miss it. The tiny bronze monument beside the Río Hormiguero in unfashionable Las Tunas is Cuba’s sole memorial to one of the country’s darkest hours.
On October 6, 1976, Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, on its way back to Havana from Guyana, took off after a stopover in Barbados’ Seawell airport. Nine minutes after clearing the runway, two bombs went off in the cabin’s rear toilet causing the plane to crash into the Atlantic Ocean. All 73 people on board – 57 of whom were Cuban – were killed. The toll included the entire Cuban fencing team fresh from a clean sweep of gold medals at the Central American Championships. At the time, the tragedy of Flight 455 was the worst ever terrorist attack in the Western hemisphere.
Hours after the bombing, two Venezuelan men were arrested in Barbados and a line was quickly traced back to Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, two Cuban-born anti-Castro activists with histories as CIA operatives.
Arrested in Venezuela in 1977, the men were tried by both civilian and military courts and spent the best part of 10 years in Venezuelan prisons. Bosch was released in 1987 and went to live in the US. Carriles, meanwhile, broke out of jail in 1985 in a daring escape in which he dressed up as a priest. A year later he re-emerged in Nicaragua coordinating military supply drops for US-sponsored Contra rebels.
Despite worsening relations with the CIA and a failed attempt on his life in Guatemala City in 1990, Carriles remained active. In 1997 he was implicated in a series of bombings directed against tourist sites in Havana, and in 2000 he was arrested in Panama City for allegedly attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Pardoned in 2004 by outgoing Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso, Carriles sought asylum in the US after the Venezuelan Supreme Court filed an extradition request for him. The US has so far refused to hand him over claiming that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.
As of 2009 Carriles and Bosch – both now in their 80s – were still living freely in the US. Among some anti-Castro extremists they are hailed as freedom fighters, while to most Cubans they are Latin America’s Osama bin Ladens.
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RESTAURANTS
Cremería Yumurí (cnr Francisco Vega & Vicente García; 10am-4pm & 5-11pm) Las Tunas’ substitute Coppelia; queue up with your pesos for sundaes