At Cay Largo, we finally found the teal water and fine sand beach paradise we had been looking for in the Jardines de la Reina (the south eastern islands) Cay Largo had a few charter boats pottering around but was far from over run and the white, sandy (mostly no-see-um’s free) beaches were heavenly. Seriously heavenly. We decided to extend our visa….
One of the locals at the Cienfuegos Marina had mentioned a playa (beach) that we should visit. He enthusiastically told us “ you can take the beach!” and we interpreted his broken English to mean that we could anchor quite close to it. Once there, we watched with interest as a number of charter boat skippers parked their catamaran bows right up on the steep sandy drop off of Playa Serena. The kids harangued us until we agreed to give it a go.
So, we ‘took the beach,’ walked our anchor up and plonked it on the sand. We had a lovely day perched on the edge of the beach and the kids thought it was the bees knees to be able to jump off the bows right onto the sand. Definitely worth the effort to get the photograph!
The local airport was the only place with Wi-Fi so we spent a few hours tolerating the bemused looks from the security guards in a deserted departure lounge (there were no flights scheduled that day 
) The Cuban government blocks certain sites (for example, we couldn’t access the apple store) and naughty Russ managed to bypass the firewall via a U.S based vpn. We thought it was slightly ironic that he was able to do this from a Cuban airport using their Wi-Fi 
We are continually amazed at how very busy we are living on a boat! School is a minimum of 3 hours a day and some days this extends to 3.5 – 4 hours. I am loving being part of the kids schooling and we both feel we are getting to know Kai and Jaiya on a whole new level (and we have a new respect for teachers! ) By the time you add in meal preparation and cooking, boat maintenance (on-going, trust me) and cleaning- the days go by so quickly!
We used to clean Tika on a Saturday and it mostly took us about 3 hours of pain (none of us enjoyed it and the kids lagged after about 45 minutes) but we now have a new system! 15 minutes a day accompanied with loud, pumping music that we move to and get it done! It works- the kids really get into it and with all 4 of us working full pelt we get so much done…When there are other boats around I sometimes feel to apologise for the noise pollution “sorry but it’s only for 15 minutes and it’s the only way we get our boat clean!”
We also have a meal roster with teams of 2 (one adult, one child) whipping up and cleaning up after both lunch and dinner. So the kids are as busy as us and do complain sometimes that they never just get to laze around and read….. I know how they feel!
Stopping to smell the roses in idyllic islands like these have helped us cope with our ambitious schedule (we have a plan to cover more of the Caribbean in 6 months than many cruisers we have met cover in 2 years!)
We could have easily settled down at this anchorage for at least a month…but we are on a tight schedule so after 10 blissful days and a quick calculation of the time required to hang out in Havana, get to Fort Lauderdale for a bunch of boat-work and then make it to the Bahamas for Christmas, we knew it was time to pull anchor….
We got to enjoy a few more gorgeous coral atolls as we slowly headed west and waited for the right weather window for our 2 night passage to pop around the corner to Havana.
We cruised the inside channel of the islands in awe of the miles and miles of 2m deep, crystal clear water. We were all up on the foredeck for hours, surrounded and mesmerised by the most magical colour blue. In some areas a very striking line distinguished the deep water drop offs and we felt like we were in a painting where the artist had carved a dark line into a clean hue of the freshest aqua paint.
We found some of the best snorkelling we have ever done (and we have been spoilt) just off the channel from Isla Rosario – a deep drop off between two large, coral bombies, massive, cruisey barracudas, a moray eel, interesting coral structures, crevices and ledges, clear water and a white sand drop off…nice! (our still pictures don’t do it justice but look out for the go-pro footage in the Cuba movie- coming soon :-))
We spent our last few days on the south coast in another lagoon off the island of Cayo Campos. We met the old guys who stay on the island and they invited us ashore to view ‘los Monos’ (the monkeys) who apparently inhabit the island along with large, native rodents called ‘Hutia’ that we were keen to see… Unfortunately, the monkeys and rodents were being elusive, but we got up close and personal with a couple of gigantic iguanas and the two caretakers gifted us with some coconuts as we fled the island to escape the dusk attack of no-see-ums. Later, the men came out to Tika to ask us for a couple of cans of tomatoes- they explained that they were tired of eating lobster and wanted to make a spaghetti sauce We happily handed over the cans and were given FIVE live lobsters, two of which were massive! We added a bottle of rum to the 2 cans of tomatoes….
The weather window presented itself and in a matter of 2 hours, we had cooked up a massive pot of lobster chowder, got Tika ship-shape for passage and were heading off into the sunset- Marina Hemingway here we come!
Next post: there’s NO PLACE like HAVANA!!
This entry was posted in The Sail.
Fantastic descriptions !