Niquero & back to Cayos Azuaga Cuba

Niquero’s sugar refinery chimney

We made an early start on Tuesday 12 February to motor the 4 miles from Cayos Azuaga to Niquero, where we anchored in the very shallow shelving bay off the town.  I stayed on board to work on the generator fuel lines whilst Nicky and Charlotte went ashore to check in with the Guarda Frontera and to top up our supplies for our planned trip into the remote cays of Los Jardines de la Reine.

Left: steam train statue in one of Niquero’s many small parks.  Right: Wall commemorating the revolutionary fighters killed close to Niquero

[Continued by Nicky] We dinghied ashore to a semi-ruined quay close to the fishing boat compound where we were met by one of the local Guarda Frontera officers.  Having escorted us to the office he began the standard check-in process but by now I had compiled a document in Spanish and English with all BV’s vital statistics, as well as our passport information and the list of ports (with dates and times) we had so far visited.  The officer was very pleased with this.  Not only did he not have to find paper on which to write all the information, he didn’t have to struggle with the language barrier.  We were delighted because it saved us at least half an hour.  We explained that we were only in Niquero until the evening and, as we shook hands again for the umpteenth time, we agreed that I would collect the despatcho at about 1600 and he pointed us in the right direction for town.

Residential street close to the fishing boat compound and the Guarda Frontera office

Niquero was the largest town after Santiago de Cuba that we had visited thus far and the operating sugar refinery is the cornerstone to its economy.  Despite its relative wealth (obvious from the paved roads even away from the town centre) we still saw turkeys and chickens pecking in the roads, plenty of horse-drawn carts and livestock being driven through the residential areas.  Just outside the Guarda Frontera office we also found a small shack selling eggs, trays and trays of them.  I was somewhat surprised having become used to having ‘huevos?’ hissed at me whenever I went close to a market.  Many weeks later we discussed buying eggs in Cuba with some friends who had visited the previous year.  They too had seen a similar stall in a town and, unlike me, had tried to purchase some eggs there.  But they had been told that they needed a ration card which presumably means that all the eggs I bought in Cuba were on the black market.

Town Hall 

Typical street scene

Like the residential areas, we found Niquero’s town centre that bit grander, larger and busier (with people and traffic) than Pilón.  The sugar refinery towers over all and reminded me in an odd way of pictures and films of coal mining towns in England and Wales.

We saw plenty of lap-board houses in Niquero which reminded us of American films about the wild west

But many of the buildings also reminded me of scenes from American wild west movies, with their lap-board construction, air of slight dilapidation and the rough and ready road outside.  All it needed was someone riding a horse down the centre of the street and the image would have been complete!

Fresh food market

The pig was not best impressed with this mode of transport
and made his/her feelings known – very loudly!

We found the fresh food market after asking several people.  Disappointingly, there was no fruit for sale on the day that we visited but there was enough veg including small peppers that when fried are rather like the pimenton Padron of Galicia.  I wanted to buy some more fresh meat but when we were first in the market there was very little available.  We strolled a bit further down the road and, as we turned back, we were passed by a horse-drawn cart in the back of which was a very freshly killed pig.  It didn’t take a brain surgeon to work out where it was headed and, sure enough, when we arrived back at the market the carcass was being carried in to the butchers’ area at the back.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t make myself understood enough to buy a small quantity (1kg); most people seemed to be buying much larger amounts or just huge lumps of warm, wobbling pig fat.  And we saw first-hand that butchery is a dangerous job in Cuba.  One of the butchers misjudged his machete slicing and made a deep gouge in his index finger.  Clearly, there was no workplace first aider nor a green first aid box with antiseptic wipes and plasters, just the competing butcher loaning the injured party the cloth he’d been using to wipe down his butcher’s block.  Nice.

Gunged up one-way valve which rather explains
why the generator didn’t want to work

[Reg continues] Back on board, having taken everything apart for the umpteenth time, I found a way to remove the innards of the one-way valve in the fuel line to the generator and discovered that it was totally blocked with fuel bug gunge.

The table normally sits over this part of the fuel tank.  Left: With the table removed, floorboard lifted and most of the pipes disconnected I was able to…. Right: lift the top off the fuel tank and peer inside (again!)

Unfortunately, to get the valve apart I’d had to remove it from its copper fuel line and, to do that, I’d had to lift the tank inspection hatch off the tank.  It’s clearly not designed for this to happen over and over (though I accept we have had to do this more than I would consider normal, even given that we have a fuel problem) so I intend to buy some more copper pipe and connectors and re-run that fuel line when we get back to the USA; it’s just far too much of a faff with current alignment.  I cleaned up the valve and put everything back together, crossed my fingers and started the generator……Hooray, it started up fine and ran well but I didn’t want to put it to the ultimate test and run the watermaker of Niquero as there was lots of black soot on the water from the sugar factory.

The fishing boat compound with sugar refinery belching black smoke in the background.  The somewhat broken down quay where we left the dinghy is just out of this shot to the right of the picture

With the generator working again, Nicky took me for a quick tour of the town in the afternoon whilst Charlotte stayed on board and caught up with some holiday sunbathing.

Steam train display from a different angle

We retraced the morning’s route, past the steam train landmark….

Plaza Céspedes

….and into the town centre but our priority was to check our e-mails for any urgent messages.  So, we stopped in the main park/square, Plaza Céspedes where, as is the way in Cuba currently, there is state-controlled Wi-Fi and internet access and spent some time catching up on things at home. Fortunately there was nothing mega-urgent that needed attending to….

Left: the local radio station.  Right:  La Coppelia, the state-run ice-cream shop ‘chain’

… so we were able to treate ourselves to a bowl of mango ice-cream at the local state-controlled ice-cream parlour next to the plaza.  [Ed: There are many plazas and parks in Cuba named after Snr Céspedes which intrigued me, and a bit of work with Google provided some enlightenment.  Carlos Manuel de Céspedes led the Cuban uprising against the Spanish at the start of the Ten Years’ War.  From his sugar plantation near Manzanillo (a town we had hoped to visit but did not have time to go to; one for next time!), he proclaimed the now famous Grito de Yaraon 10 October 1868.  In this cry of liberty for an independent Cuba, Céspedes called for the abolition of slavery and freed his own slaves as an example. The Spanish authorities reacted as one might have expected but Céspedes had anticipated this and had planned a response.  Within weeks he had raised an army of more than 1500 and had marched on Bayamo but treaties between the Spanish authorities and Spaniards born in Spain but living in Cuba put paid to the successes of Céspedes’ forces.  In 1874, Céspedes was killed in battle signalling the beginning of the end but the war itself dragged on for a further 4 years, ultimately leaving 200,000 Cubans and 80,000 Spaniards dead.]

Dance lessons in the square

Bicycle parked outside the market

Ice-cream eaten, we headed into the commercial centre of the town.  It was mid-afternoon and some of the secondary school pupils had turned out for dancing lessons in the square opposite the market.  As we watched we were distracted by a bicycle we had spotted…..a bicycle with a pig’s head hanging from the handlebars!

Residential district of Niquero

Having completed our tour of the town, we headed back to the Guarda Frontera to retrieve our paperwork before returning to BV.

We could have stayed at anchor off Niquero but it would have meant a very early start to get our papers the following morning so, instead, we raised anchor at 1600hrs and made our way back to Cayos Azuaga.  And, of course, this had the added benefit of getting us further away from the soot coming out of the sugar refinery chimney.

Left: The Galicians would shudder at our calling these ‘pimento Padron’ but these small peppers taste very much like the Spanish delicacy.  Right: our last swordfish steaks

Within the hour were secure at anchor at Cayos Azuaga with another quiet night ahead of us.  We fried up the ‘pimenton Padron’ which were excellent and barbecued the last of the swordfish fillets [Ed: believe it or not, that fish fed us for over 2 weeks!]  But the evening wasn’t all sweetness and light.  Nicky did a check of the fuel contents using the Tank Tender gauge and found that the main fuel tank wasn’t reading.  It looked like the saloon table would have to be lifted once again, this time to work on the Tank Tender air line rather than on the fuel lines.

Niquero and Cayos Azuaga, Cuba