Playa Larga, Cuba

A smaller village, less tourists, more dirt roads and cleaner. Lovely casa, great meals and very colourful bedrooms.We didn’t eat in the casa that much as it was $10 to 12 CUC each for a huge casa meal. Down the road for $5CUC you could get a fresh whole fried fish caught that morning in the bay.

I asked if we could just have coffee and toast for breakfast. It started out great with a pot of coffee and toast, a few minutes later a plate of pastries, ok, then another plate and another. They just can’t help themselves feeding you so much good food.

Matanzas Province baseball finals party was on in the town square while we were in Playa Larga, dancing, cheap cocktails and meeting fellow tourists. It went on for three nights. You would think that it would be a good opportunity to see some salsa but - no, there was dancing and Cubans definitely have loads of rhythm but no salsa (only tourists dancing salsa).

$1CUC= $1US cocktails, Caipirinhas too good to resist, so we threw caution to the wind and tried their cocktails even the Pina coladas made with milk, but long life milk and the bar tender also used gloves and tongs. What could go wrong, in for a penny in for a pound. Every morning when Derek and I woke up we would high five each other, for making it through the night without a barf room dash. Things were definitely improving.

Next to the casa there was an old closed resort or shopping mall with an empty car park area where we could swim in the ocean. Further down the road was a government resort, very quiet, but open. There were a few people on the resort beach but there was also a resident dog there with her pups and she was not having a bar of Lucy. Fortunately the dog at the pool, yes stray dogs everywhere, was a lot more welcoming. Because there are so many dogs they don’t really care if you bring your own along. Pool area was empty so we had our pick of the crayfish for lunch, yum. The gardener at the time was cutting down green coconuts and offered us each one, double yum. I was told that only government restaurants can sell crayfish tails.

The casa owner and the neighbour set us up with a taxi driver, masks and snorkels to go and check out the snorkelling area on the Bay of Pigs. The place he took us was called Cueva de los Peces (Cave of Fishes).
The cave or cenote, a natural sinkhole is opposite the ocean snorkelling spot, it’s 230 feet (70 m) deep and filled with a mixture of salt and freshwater. Really interesting to swim through narrow sections and look down into deep cracks in the rock. On the ocean side the taxi driver gave us a plastic bottle with bread in it to attract the fish, so many fish all swarming around us. Beautiful warm day, clear warm water and loads of fish and coral. Fantastic, loved it.