Cuba (8): Jibacoa and a Strange Trip Home

Covid Affects the End of our Trip and Maroons us at Home for a Long time

Going All-Inclusive

Cuba

I dislike the concept of all-inclusive resorts; no one should be encouraged to visit a country and opt out of all engagement with it other than its climate. But we had already engaged with Cuba, and (as Bob said) you can't criticise what you don't understand, so we gave it a brief try.

The resort building and gardens were well-maintained. Our ground-floor room was clean, bright and comfortable, the patio over-looked the pool area, and the beach was just a small step beyond.

The pool area from our patio

The main restaurant served buffets for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast apart I dislike buffets, the food is usually tepid and tired, the ambience more feeding station than restaurant. In Jibacoa these disadvantages were exaggerated by arranging the tables in straight lines. The staff proceeded up and down (they reminded me of exam invigilators), sometimes removing empty plates, sometimes distributing wine (which exam invigilators don't). All drinks were, of course, ‘free’ but cost control was achieved by never more than half-filling the tiny glasses. What the wine was, other than cheap, nobody said and nobody seemed to care.

Two other ‘free’ restaurants were bookable and after enduring the ‘cafeteria’ on Saturday night, I tried to book one of the alternatives for Sunday. Both, I was told, were closed. Throughout our 48-hour stay (already reduced from 72), guests were continually leaving, and few if any arrived. The curse of Covid was closing the resort, facility by facility.

The saving grace was the upstairs ‘social bar’ providing cocktails before dinner and digestifs afterwards in a comfortable and civilised atmosphere.

Jibacoa is on the north coast (The Straight of Florida) a little west of Matanzas

Sun, Sand and Pool

The resort’s residents spend most of their time when not eating and/or drinking indulging in the pleasures of sun, sand and pool. There were nice beaches to walk on…

The beach, Jibacoa

…and a warm sea to swim in (though Lynne still complained it was cold, and had a current)…

Lynne in the sea, Jibacoa

…but for most this involved lying on their backs shielding their eyes from a sun that shone happily in a clear blue sky.

I can just be seen bobbing about in the sea

The accommodation blocks surrounded a pool more used for lying around than swimming in. As guest numbers dwindled, there were times when I almost had the pool to myself.

Not quite having the pool to myself

I also spent some time on the patio in the company of Hilary Mantel, whose fictional account of the Tudor court rings so true it is hard to believe she was not really there.

'Bring up the Bodies' Jibacoa patio

Cuban -American Relations Part 4

Fidel Castro 1959
(Public Domain)

A serious interlude among the trivialities. This is the fourth and final part. Part 1 can be found on the way to Viñales, Part 2 on the way to Trinidad and Part 3 in Trinidad.

President Batista had been an American client, but he had sorely tested their patience and American support during the revolution was, at best, half-hearted. The revolution had included non-communist forces and in 1959 it remained unclear whether Fidel Castro was himself a Communist. Given that ambiguity President Eisenhower recognised the new regime and gave it a cautious welcome.

Dwight D Eisenhower 1959
(Public Domain)

The ambiguity soon evaporated and the Americans began to fear Communist insurgencies spreading throughout Latin America. In 1960 Castro nationalised American assets in Cuba, so Eisenhower froze Cuban assets on American soil, severed diplomatic ties and imposed a trade embargo, the ‘bloqueo’ which still stands today. He also directed the CIA to assist Cuban exiles in recruiting a militia and in planning a counter-revolutionary invasion.

Eisenhower informed President-elect Kennedy of this just before his inauguration in January 1961. Kennedy permitted the invasion to go ahead in April, but the landing in the Bay of Pigs was a spectacular failure.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Grossly Simplified Account

John F Kennedy 1963
Public Domain

Castro realised he needed friends. The USSR was the obvious candidate and First Secretary Khrushchev was delighted to have an ally so close to his great enemy. In July 1962 Khrushchev and Castro agreed that the presence of nuclear missiles in Cuba would effectively deter any future invasion. Deliveries started almost immediately.

Kennedy could not countenance Soviet missiles so close to the US mainland and on the 22nd of October set up a naval blockade to prevent further missile deliveries. Khrushchev called this ‘outright piracy.’ As Soviet ships carrying missiles approached the blockade the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. My 12-year-old self was convinced we were all going to die, but on the 25th Soviet freighters bound for Cuba turned back.

Nikita Khrushchev 1963
German Federal Archive

The crisis was not yet over, some missiles remained in Cuba, and Kennedy considered an invasion to remove them. Convinced this invasion was imminent Castro asked Khrushchev for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

Wiser heads prevailed. In a secret deal the USSR agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba and the USA would remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey, the only NATO country with a land border with the USSR.

Since the Crisis

Cuban-American relations had reached rock bottom and had improved little by 2014, though President Carter agreed a measure of mutual diplomatic recognition in 1977. From the start of his Presidency, Barak Obama worked to normalise relations with Cuba. Full diplomatic relations were restored in 2015, travel restrictions were eased and economic initiatives made. Progress has been on hold or in reverse during the Trump years.

Being embargoed by their biggest and richest neighbour has not been easy for Cuba, but both sides have displayed remarkable determination and pig-headedness for 60 years.

Cocktails

‘Free’ drinks in Cuba means cocktails, and the menus were lengthy. Unfortunately, not everything was available. The background music to our stay was the trundle of suitcases as more and more people moved out, while nobody came to replace them. The bars closed one by one and empty bottles in those still open were not always replaced. The shake of a head became an increasingly frequent response to an order as key ingredients disappeared. I asked for canchànchara, daiquiri’s ruder, cruder forebear, in several locations but was repeatedly thwarted.

As I confided in the Viñales post, we are decades too young to have experienced the first cocktail boom, and far too old to have been caught up in the second. While not arriving in Cuba as cocktail virgins, we were certainly inexperienced, but if Jibacoa did not quite bring the variety we had hoped for, there was enough for us to lose our ingénu(e) status.

Piña Colada

I have always suspected I was the wrong demographic for Piña Colada but coconut and pineapple are two of my favourite flavours and with the addition of Cuban white rum what’s not to like? The toothaching sweetness, that’s what! Like Baileys this is a drink which attracts young people, generally young females (I try not to be sexist, but such is my observation) not grumpy old men. ‘Serve with an umbrella for kitsch appeal’ says the BBC Good Food Guide; mine came in a plastic cup - more naff than kitsch.

Piña Colada in a plastic cup, Jibacoa

The Collins Family

I was under the impression that John Collins was whisk(e)y and Tom Collins gin based. I was wrong, they are both feature gin, though different styles of gin. Confusingly, there is a Bourbon based version of John Collins and that is the only one I had previously encountered. Either way the spirit is sweetened and diluted with soda water until it loses its character. Ron is Spanish for rum, so Ron Collins has a better name, but otherwise the same problem.

Tequila Sunrise

Tequila was another drink we had not encountered before visiting Mexico in 2017. As a spirit we preferred Mescal, but Tequila does make a good Margarita. Here, Lynne tried a Tequila sunrise. Grenadine and orange juice give it colour and fruitiness while triple sec lends the tequila a little more bite. Lynne approved, but as the photo shows, I had by this time reverted to Daiquiris.

A Tequila Sunrise and a Daiquiri

And finally, Cuba’s finest….

Havana 7-year-old Rum

Not a cocktail, but a proper after dinner drink, a strong, rich, complex delight to be sipped in small quantities for great pleasure.

Wild Life

The resort is set up for humans - the grass is neatly trimmed, the flowerbeds carefully weeded – but the natural world cannot be completely excluded.

The Greater Antilles Grackle

The Greater Antillean Grackle is a fine name for a very common bird. The Greater Antilles (for those as ignorant as I was until I looked it up) is the northern region of the Caribbean - Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, Jamaica and a host of smaller islands. Grackles belong to the icterid family, the new-world blackbirds, though few of them (the Greater Antillean Grackle apart) are actually black, nor are they particularly close relatives of the old-world blackbirds.

Greater Antillean Grackle, Jibacoa

It is a handsome bird with shiny plumage and a tail that appears to be turned on its side. Present in large numbers they hopped about the lawns or came to the swimming pool mob handed, standing in a line and drinking thirstily as though committed to emptying it.

Anole Lizard

I think this is an anole lizard, but which of the 300+ species is another question. It has apparently lost its tail, but seemed happy enough, spending most of its day basking on a small rock outside our front door.

Anole lizard, Jibacoa

A Strange Journey Home

We arrived in Jibacoa late afternoon Saturday (21st) and left the same time on Monday. Our first stay in an all-inclusive resort rather confirmed our prejudices; they provide sea, sun, sand and booze and the only clue to the host country is the accent of the staff. If you work hard all year and feel a need to spend your two-week break in ghettoised idleness, then these resorts are fair enough, I suppose, but to anyone interested in travel, they are an abomination. The gods of Covid had decreed we would leave a day early, but we had already begun to feel trapped and bored. I do wish we had spent longer in Havana, though.

The airport is a pleasant 80-minute taxi-ride along the coast. We shared the first 20 minutes with a local company rep. ‘How long were you at Jibacoa,’ he asked. ‘Two days,’ we said. ‘Oh no, what a shame, such a short time in Cuba!’ We told him we had been in Cuba longer and enjoyed visiting other parts of the island. He seemed surprised that anybody did that.

Havana’s small scruffy airport was heaving with people, many in masks, but frequently lowering or raising them to talk as though their mere presence was enough to ward off danger.

24-Mar-2020

Our overnight flight to Paris (the flight we had originally booked, only a day earlier) was full, but on-time and uneventful. Unfortunately, Air France/KLM had consolidated their Birmingham flights, necessitating an extra hop to Amsterdam. To enter the Schengen area, we had to produce our Amsterdam boarding cards to prove we were not staying.

Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol are two of the world’s biggest and busiest airports. With the shops and cafés closed and the concourses all but deserted, walking through them was a strange experience. Birmingham, smaller but usually busy, was the same. We showed our passports, collected our cases and trundled them to the bus stop where we waited in post-apocalyptic loneliness.

Birmingham Airport after the apocalypse

The parking company sent a 25-seater bus just for us; it was the second day of lockdown and only a handful of cars remained to be collected. We drove home along empty motorways and when we got there, we stayed there, because that was the ‘new normal’.

Where are they all?

Cuba

Part 1: Havana
Part 2: Havana to Viñales
Part 3: Walking the Viñales Valley
Part 4: Viñales to Trinidad de Cuba
Part 5: Trinidad (1) The Town
Part 6: Trinidad (2) Valle de Los Ingenios
Part 7: Santa Clara and Che Guevara
Part 8: Jibacoa and a Strange Trip Home