Cuba Journal 7: Turning the Tables on Cienfuegos

I just couldn’t reconcile myself to the idea of whiling away days on the beach in Cuba. After a few days in the bustle and blaze of Havana I was yearning for some oceanic immersion, and I did sneak a short afternoon on a ‘beach’ outside of Trinidad, but that was all I allowed myself. The beaches of Cuba are tourist magnets; hotel compounds with little notion of scarcity. The days of tourist apartheid might officially be over, but I just couldn’t see how I’d learn much about Cuba on one of those beaches. So I sweated and I burned and I settled for Cienfuegos instead.

It’s hard to know what to make of Cienfuegos. My guidebook (Lonely Planet’s Cuba guide is one of the best I’ve used) talked up the French flavours of the city, which I suppose is one way to explain a city’s je ne sais quois. It listed cemeteries among the city’s sights, which are pretty much the standard Latin American tourist fallback.

Cienfuegos feels far more Cuban than French. Whether Spanish colonial or French neoclassical, since the revolution all architecture is merging into the same faded, dusty style (in this sense at least the revolution has been egalitarian). The same tired revolutionary billboards – more of these, if anything – grace the streets, and there are rooms for rent everywhere.

The most distinctive thing about Cienfuegos was that there weren’t many tourists around. Clearly it could accommodate any that did show up, but apparently the Lonely Planet pitch just wasn’t bringing in the crowds. This was really what made Cienfuegos worthwhile; the sense that much of what I saw was actually stuff that Cubans liked to do (when they weren’t chasing tourist CUC), and that even without the tourists, life in Cienfuegos slouched on.

In the daytime music in cafes in the old town (where they didn’t play Buena Vista Social Club covers), in the couples ranged along the Malecón (actual Cuban couples, not just dirty old Italians and their mistresses) in the hundreds of  teenagers milling about outside the Saturday night fast food joints, and in the idle streets where people slapped dominos onto makeshift boards, there was no interest in me, only in getting on with life.

It was the closest Cuba came to boring, which is why it was interesting. There were no shows being put on. At least not for me. So I turned the tables, and instead of being followed, I followed the steady trickle of locals heading down to Punta Gorda.

Smart-assed Punta Gorda (gorda = fat) is a splinter of land that narrows and narrows as it thrusts out into the picturesque Bay of Cienfuegos. Across the bay to the east rise the steep, storm-brewing mountains that separate Cienfuegos from Trinidad. Across the bay to the west squats the dome of an incomplete Soviet nuclear reactor, which has never generated anything except debt. Beyond that lies the Bay of Pigs.

Punta Gorda is where Cienfuegos passes the weekend. At the tip of the point is a park where volley ball nets are rigged and music plays and vendors amble. There are no beaches but the water is shallow and still and the ground silty. Kids toss tiny lines into the water and snag tiny fish. Lovers intertwine on the rocks. The guys flirt hard and the women throw sass in their faces.

So I got my beach, sort of. And I got my creepy observations on ‘real’ Cuban life. And I eased my sunburnt limbs in the soothing waters while a refinery blew white plumes across the bay. And then I got my ass back to Havana, because Cienfuegos was just a bit too easy, and I was running out of time.