Diving Part 2- Bay of Pigs and Cienfuegos

April 25-26, 2017

Read about our first two days of diving here.

Day 3- Bahia de Cochinos

On Day 3 we set out with Danilo and Leo in the Plymouth headed south across the island to the Bay of Pigs.

Cuba wouldn't have felt complete if the car didn't break down at least once, and we weren't disappointed. After a short stop to grab a snack, the car refused to start again. We abandoned Leo with the Plymouth and all piled into the second car we had with us (there was another couple that joined us that day) and he caught up later once it was fixed.

Along the way there was a stretch of road where crabs were smashed everywhere. Danilo told us that time of year they come from the forest down to the water to lay their eggs, and the road is in the way. So we were swerving around crabs down the whole stretch of road. They can puncture tires so its better to try to miss them.

read 'heyy, heyyy' in the voice of the crabs from Finding Nemo

They have CRAZY eyes

When we reached the Bay of Pigs, it was picturesque.

Hopping into crystal clear water, we headed out towards the drop off.

At the end of the first dive we had a wreck to explore, which is one of my favorite parts of diving.

Out of the murk it came looming

Danilo told us it was a fishing boat, I don't think it was purposefully sunk for a reef, but he didn't say anything about why it sunk.

The pilot house had an open top so we could swim through the door and then exit through the roof.

We gave our best underwater Titanic impressions.

In between dives we ate fresh mango that Danilo bought from a stand on the side of the road. Mango isn't typically my favorite, but these ones were delicious. Mango *is* Shay's favorite, so she was blissed out eating it.

The second dive was as pretty as the first.

Stoplight parrot fish

We found a big ol' barracuda hanging out by the bottom

We drove to Cienfuegos for that night, and checked rooftop sunset in Cuba off the bucket list.

Danilo and Leo had their rooms in the hotel right next to ours, and their facilities were deemed better than ours for rinsing off all the dive gear. Turns out the sink was up on the roof, so we hauled the box of dive gear up along with a couple beers and enjoyed the evening.

Sunset was beautiful.

We took a stroll around town at dusk and walked through the main plaza. There were at least three different soccer games were going on which had three different age brackets of kids with or without shirts and shoes.

There were some really pretty buildings and statues in the square.

Jose Marti has statues everywhere in Cuba. Cienfuegos was no different.

Then after a nap and a shower we fancied ourselves up and headed out on the town.

All fancied up with nowhere to go

We cruised down the malecon in our Plymouth (which we discovered had green underglow on the tires) feeling like a million bucks. Cienfuegos has a little peninsula that sticks out into the water full of night life and fancy houses. We sat on the seawall people watching and enjoying the lights across the water.

Then we dropped the car back off at the hotels and walked a couple blocks to a club. Even though it was around 10:30, it was evidently still early since no one was dancing and everyone was just sitting around in the heavily air conditioned room with their drinks.

Eventually people started dancing though, and we got some Cuban salsa in. There was also a performance from a dance troupe at one point. Here's the video I took:

[Note: the sound quality is horrible since it was so loud. Please turn down whatever speaker system you are using prior to clicking the link.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0DLQPp8G-4&feature=youtu.be

We put away our fair share of beers too, though Danilo and Leo had the majority of them. At one point this was our little table, filled with empty Cristal cans.

We had a fantastic night out on the town, and did get some sleep that night, even if we were a little blurry eyed in the morning.

Day 4- Guajimico
Our last dive site was Guajimico, a bit east from Cienfuegos. On the drive there we got a good view of the Escambray mountains where Fidel Castro hid out during the revolution.

Our dive site was at a little resort in a cove.

We had two 'boat dives' which ended up being us going out in a rowboat to where we started the dives from. Danilo had the day to rest and our dive master was Sander

Again with the washed out photos. Sorry...

We had two fun wall dives, saw some bigger fish and a giant lion fish on the last dive, though we had left the camera on shore so we have no photo evidence.

Since we were at a little resort we took a dip in the pool and lounged on pool chairs during our surface interval.

After peeling my wetsuit off for the last time we went an hour farther to Trinidad where we said thank you and goodbye to Danilo, Leo and the Plymouth. It was a short and sweet goodbye, and armed with great memories from the first half of our trip we set out to explore by ourselves for the rest of it.