Mon, March 19 - Driving to Playa Larga

As the plan was to bird around the Moka Hotel in the morning, and  it doesn’t get light until 7:30, we were allowed to sleep in and meet for breakfast at that time.  The hotel provided an elaborate buffet of fruits, cheeses, breads and made-to-order omelets.

Moka Grounds

  We were joined by Oscar, a local guide, and walked around the hotel grounds.  This area, in the earlier half of the 20th century, had been cleared for pasture.  When it was decided to establish an ecologically- minded community, the hillsides were terraced, thus the name, Las Terrazas.   The levels were planted with native and imported species of trees that would be useful in woodworking, furniture, etc., thus teak, hibiscus and other trees were planted and now have created a lovely forest in the area. 

Cuban Emerald Hummingbird

We got great views of the Cuban Emerald hummingbird that my father had identified back in 1954 on a beach at So Dartmouth, MA after Hurricane Carol had blown it all the way up the eastern seaboard!

About 9:30 we had to leave and loaded on the bus for a short ride across the village lake to a steep hill planted in pines.  We climbed to the top the slope and there at the tip of a pine were two Stygian Owls, large owls with a distinctive face patterns who obligingly sat and preened for time while zip liner tourists cruised by.  

Stygian Owl

The bus took us a short ways to a farm, Santa Rosalia,  where the owners put out seed for the.common Yellow-faced Grassquit and the rarer Cuban Grassquit which allowed us to  observe them together.  We also got a chance to wander around the farm and see the chickens, turkeys, goats, and many pigs wandering around their pens.  A pair of oxen with a wooden yoke trod up with a load of manure on a sledge.  It is amazing to see the mix of old and new in Cuba.

Cuban Grassquit (L) and Yellow-faced Grassquit (R)

Sweet curious piglets

We continued on to an old French coffee plantation, Cafetal Buena Vista, that used several hundred slaves in the early 1800s to process coffee beans.  Many French growers moved over to Cuba after the slave rebellion in Haiti and set up shop on this island.  The coffee plantation has been fixed up as a park and restaurant.   We settled into a long table on a leafy terrace and had a pleasant lunch while being serenaded by a local band.

Cafetal Buena Vista

I was hoping to hatch a glimpse of Havana, but we managed to skirt around it and headed south through long expanses of scrubby countryside, neither farmland nor grazing land, but seemingly unoccupied.   At 5 PM we arrived at Playa Larga at the head of the Bay of Pigs, or Bahía de Cochinos .  The 1961 CIA-led invasion here is known as Playa Girón in Cuba.

We were told by Jon that we had to split up into two hotels.  Bob and I, Sarah & Erin, two women from the Wings office in Tucson who were able to come on the trip at the last minute due to a medical cancellation, and Bob & Laura were dropped off at the new and pretty 3-room Casa Kirenia.  Our proud host greeted us and showed us our brightly-painted, sparkling-clean rooms.  Ours is bright pink with a pink-tiled bathroom.  I quickly showered and got two colas which I mixed with the rum-filled "fruit juice" boxes I had found in our mini bar this morning and packed away!  The others walked to the beach while we relaxed before walking the short ways to the Hostal Enrique where the rest of our group is staying.  We joined them on the roof-top ocean-view terrace for the List.  

Cuban transportation

We got back to our Casa at 8 and had a good supper of fish soup and chicken or shrimp.  No wifi, so the blog will have to waitt