Cienfuegos (Part 3) Cuba

Early in the morning of Thursday 28 February, before the wind got up and made it difficult, we moved out of our marina berth to the anchorage.  By the time we were settled we had a message from Charlotte saying that her flights had all worked out and that she had got home OK – good to know.  Our priority that day was to sort out our visa extensions as our visas were due to expire in under 48 hours, so we headed into town to start the ball rolling.  The visas extensions are done at a government office about a mile or so outside the town centre but instead of paying cash at the office you have to take Government stamps (25CUC-worth per visa extension) to the appropriate value. The stamps are obtained from the BANDEC bank (Banco de Crédito y Comercio) but we didn’t realise this and turned up at any old bank, only to find the error of our ways after a 10min wait in a queue.  When we found the BANDEC there was a security van outside and a fierce looking chap by the door who barred our way in.  So, we waited in the blazing sunshine until, eventually, uniformed men with shotguns appeared from the bank, jumped into the waiting van and hared off.  Clearly, G4S had just made a delivery.  We were just about to go inside when we were nearly trampled underfoot by a small crowd of people from across the road.  During the delivery the queue outside the door had been sent to join the rest of the queue hiding in the shade on the other side of the road.  Now they were back, impatient to ensure that they didn’t lose their hard queued for places to 2 naïve tourists.  We repaired to the other side of the road (and the shade) to find the end of the ‘queue’. The queue was actually an amorphous blob of people.  Dredging back all the stuff she had read about shopping in Cuba, Nicky remembered that this was normal procedure and that we needed to ask for ‘ultimo’ to find the person at the end of the queue.  Ultimo located we didn’t dare move far from the lady in question, with things becoming a little more complex when one of her work colleagues showed up and they swapped positions.  But, after about ¾hr we followed our new best friend across the road to wait outside the bank and 15min later we actually got through the door.  Hooray……… or maybe not.  Inside the bank were another 80 or so seated people, all waiting, clutching numbers and staring hopefully at what looked, and acted, like a random number generator.  It took another hour for our issued number to come up at which point getting the 2x 25CUC stamps was an easy process, even if it did also take about 5 times longer than we might have expected.  By the time we came to leave the bank it was lunchtime……..and there were no queues either inside or outside the bank!  Aaaaargh!!

We walked to the visa extension office on Avienda 56 between Calles 59 and 61 only to find it closed for the second of 2 days for staff training.  Aaaaargh and aaaaargh again!!  Luckily, the sign on the door said that the office would be open the next day or, doubtless, that would have been the end of our time in Cuba.

The next day (Friday 01 March) we arrived 45min after the opening time and found another amorphous blob of a queue, this one at least 100 people strong!  We did the whole ‘ultimo’ thing again and were waiting patiently in line [Ed: whilst busy calculating time-lines for a reprovisioning shopping trip and the last safe time to leave the anchorage to head to somewhere outside Cuba] when the lady ahead of us made it clear that we should speak to the security guard at the door.  We didn’t want to be seen to be queue-jumping but we did want to get our extensions so we followed their advice and were promptly shown inside, to another queue, this time of about 30 people.  We went through the ‘ultimo?’ process but the ultimo pointed us to one of 3 Guarda Frontera officers seated at desks around the sides of the room.  The officer in question pointed Nicky to a queue of 3 people, all of whom wanted visa extensions.  Good news.  Not only had we not queue-jumped (everyone else was waiting to see one of the many other officers in the building) our queue was short.  When our turn came, the officer dealt with us quickly and courteously and, best of all, spoke good English, extolling the virtues of Cayo Largo where she had previously worked and where we were planning to visit, before extending our visas for a further month.  Excellent!

From the immigration office, we walked into the town centre on a reprovisioning run.  We headed initially to the main fresh food market but found a couple of good smaller market en route and bought some produce at them, primarily fruit, of which they seemed to have more than we remembered at the main market.  Disappointingly, our purchase of what looked to be a good papaya turned out  not to be so; another case where had we understood what one of the other sellers was trying to say to us we would have done better.

Our stash of fresh fruit and vegetables back on BV

At the main market we ran the gauntlet of the covert egg and potato-sellers, with whispered calls of ‘huevos?’, ‘patates?’ following us into the market proper.  One man, wearing strings of onions around his neck, tried to interest Nicky in buying his onions.  They were good but the price, at 5CUC a string, seemed very high so she refused until she found she was being quoted 4CUC inside the market for far inferior onions.  Capitalism is coming on nicely in some areas!

We bought lots of fresh food; there’s little opportunity for food shopping in cruising areas to the west of Cienfuegos until you reach Havana, about 200nm and, on our plan, about 2 weeks away, so it was a bit like preparing for another Atlantic crossing. We also found what looked to be an excellent butcher next door to the market, hidden behind red wooden double doors which up to this point we had always found closed.  Unfortunately, our quest for fresh meat ended in failure as we had not put our order in at least 48 hrs in advance but we found 2 large pieces of reasonable-looking frozen beef at the TRD Caribe close by and started plotting meals of goulash and beef in beer [Ed: of which more in a later blog; things did not go quite as planned!].

Milton/dilute bleach wash before drying and storing.  We bought a mix of red and green tomatoes and the unripe ones lasted us for 2½ weeks. Note also the large stash of carrots – fresh from the field these tasted fantastic and lasted brilliantly

By the end of the day BV was all set to head west; all the normal pre-passage chores were complete and we’d washed all the fruit and veg in a dilute bleach solution, let it dry and stored it carefully.  So, as a final farewell to Cienfuegos, we met up with Mike and Karen on Chapter 2 and Morgan, Cheryl and Gael from Nomadica and chatted about plans and compared notes on our Havana excursions.

Dusk in the anchorage

As dusk fell, Nicky waited to see the Guarda Frontera officer to retrieve our paperwork, promising faithfully that we wouldn’t go ashore between having the paperwork returned and our planned departure the following morning at 0500hrs.  The Guarda Frontera officer looked relieved as he didn’t want to get up before dawn just to return our despatcho and Nicky was delighted too as it saved us and even earlier start than we were already going to have, plus we could deflate and stow the dinghy that evening too.

And with that final job complete we ate home made pizzas and retired early(ish), ready for a dark o’clock start the next day.  0500hrs was the plan – ouch!

Cienfuegos, Cuba