Cuba - A Journey in Time. Part 3 (Cienfuegos)

By day 4, I was ready to leave Habana. I knew I’d be back before I left Cuba, so it wasn’t a farewell. I was determined and excited to see more Cuba, and so there I was, on the Habana-Trinidad Viazul bus.

Now, technically, there are two inter-city bus companies in Cuba (not to mention the unaffiliated pickups and trucks and local buses of various degrees of discomfort): Astra and Viazul. Astra is slightly cheaper, and operating mostly Chinese-made buses, while Viazul has some fairly comfortable Busscar buses from Europe and is a few convertibles more for just about any journey. Unfortunately for the pennywise backpacker, bus stations around the county are on some kind of a plot to force all foreigners to use Viazul, because clerks either outright refuse to sell tickets for Astra, or say the Astra time-table is very inconvenient, or some other lie like that.

So Viazul it was. I decided to postpone Trinidad for one extra day and spend the evening and the next morning in Cienfiegos, a provincial center southeast of Habana.

At the bus station, I was greeted by a crowd of casa particular owners and touts, each trying to lure me to their house for a room rent. I read my Lonely Planet on the bus, and had an idea of where I wanted to stay, but ultimately, I succumbed to the most honest-looking woman who had a small photograph of the room and the house. I believe her name was Yanay, yet another unusual female Cuban name. I followed Yanay, with my huge backpack on my shoulders, to her apartment, which turned out to be rather close to the center of town.

Cienfuegos (Cubans pronounce its name without the final “s”) was a village compared to Habana. Small, undoubtedly provincial and fairly quaint, it immediately reminded me of Stolbtcy, a town in Belarus where my aunt lives and where I spent a good portion of my childhood. Only, unlike Stolbtsy, Cienfuegos was hot and tropical, and it was by the water.

I took a walk along a few downtown streets, and bumped into a couple from my bus from Habana. He was Belgian and she was English, and they looked like one of those boyfriend-girlfriends of a few years, when they were comfortable enough with each other to travel together, but not quite yet serious enough to marry each other. We ended up splitting a horse carriage towards the small beach on the Cienfuegos harbour, and spent a couple of hours there, drinking beer and watching the waves and locals catching crabs.

I also met a German lesbian couple. Normally, I stay away from lesbians anywhere, let alone German ones, but these were exceptionally pleasant and charming. They were not older than 26, and it took me a while to get to the understanding that they were a couple. I wish they’d just declare it, sparing all of us the guesswork and awkwardness. At any rate, we ended up having a dinner at a local peso place, which – totally surprisingly – turned out OK. After dinners in the expensive paladars of Habana, this was a welcome segue into the Cuban province. I had rabit, I believe, and apart from tasting like chicken, it really wasn’t bad. I wish I could say the same about the local beer. Just like with everything else, Cuban beer made for foreigners is just fine, but the stuff the locals buy for “moneda nacional” is just dreadful. It tasted almost as if someone dissolved a tablespoonful of cane sugar in the glass of beer.

Me and the lesbians had a fun time talking and eating, but then it was time to go to sleep. Cienfuegos displayed a complete lack of any nightlife, certainly on a weekday night. Suited me fine, as I was ready to go to bed.

In the morning, I had breakfast, lovingly prepared by Yanay’s old mom, and was on my way to finish exploring the town. One of Camaguey’s sights was an old Spanish-era cemetery, which was all the way on the outskirt of town, and it took me over half an hour to walk there. The further I got from the town centre, the more the town reminded me of Stolbtsy – single-storied concrete houses, somewhat dilapidated and Spartan yet solid enough not to be called shacks; stray dogs picking at rubbish piles; half-naked children playing football in the dust; old-timers sitting in their doorways and giving each foreign passerby (about one a day) a long, examining stare.

The cemetery itself was nothing special, but it was funny how I could not just walk around by myself. There was indeed a female employee who took it to herself to follow my every move and shadow me as I was gazing at the tombs. She did try to give me a Spanish-language tour, but I declined. She, in turn, declined my tip of a CUC. Fair enough.

I had to get back into the town, get my backpack from the hotel and catch the bus for the short journey to Trinidad, Cuba’s second most popular town after Habana.