2024-03-25: Cayo Jutías
Author: David
Rob's been doing all the heavy lifting so far, as far as sharing our Cuba trip with friends goes. I write a lot and keep a travel journal myself, but it's always been my own private thing, so I figured I'd chip in here and contribute to our public travelogue.
On Monday morning, we hopped into a colectivo that was to take us to the beach at Cayo Jutías for the day. The road towards the ocean was very rough and ridden with potholes, much more so than it had been driving into Viñales. Our driver did a whole lot of quick and extreme maneuvering to avoid the rough patches, to the extent that the jerking of the car felt like an amusement park ride at times. At one point, the car in front of us careened towards a chicken in order to avoid a big pothole, and the chicken ran for its life, bawking loudly, sprinting as quickly as its stubby legs would let it. The French woman sitting next to me and I both saw this, and we looked at each other simultaneously and laughed. Despite sharing no languages in common, we were able to have this second of shared connection. Little moments like these are, frankly, some of the things I appreciate the most about travel. It doesn't matter where we come from or who we are; we're all only human, and we're all looking for the same things.
Despite the rough road, we made it to the beach in about an hour and a half. As we pulled up, a man came up to our car and said, as we understood it, "If you want lobster, I'll be grilling some on the beach over there later", which was a very enticing prospect, and we pocketed the idea for later.
The beach was a fantastically archetypal tropical beach, with pristine sugar sand and turquoise waters. The only thing missing was the hordes of people clamoring for your money or for space on the sand. We found a line of beach chairs and umbrellas laid out, picked a pair, and settled in for the day, figuring that if it cost money, then somebody would eventually come up to us. Indeed, maybe an hour later, after we had already gone for a dip and were each engrossed in our respective books, a man came over to us and told us that it would be 1500 pesos for the day, or just $5. By then, the beach was the most crowded it would be, and it was still essentially empty compared to every other tropical beach I've set foot on.
The idle morning passed by quickly, and soon it was lunchtime. We walked up and down along the beach for a while in the direction that the lobster guy had pointed, searching for him, but sadly, he was nowhere to be found, so we ended up going to the one restaurant on the beach. The only thing available on the menu was grilled lobster for 2000 pesos (about $7), but they didn't have to twist our arms. We love lobster and we had been anticipating it anyway. The giant lobster tail we each had was the best seafood we'd had yet in Cuba, simple yet flavorful and appropriately cooked, and the setting of the table right on the water certainly helped the mood as well.
After lunch, I was feeling like doing something other than laying on my chair, so we went for a walk along the beach in the other direction. We passed by a man who asked us a question, and after a brief exchange, we figured out that he was offering to take us on a boat ride out to the tip of Cayo Jutías, right then and there, for $12 each. We'd heard that there were a ton of starfish out there, so we went for it.
We waded out into the water and hopped into the motorboat. So did two women from London. And so did literally a dozen Cubans, some of whom were already utterly smashed with a beer or a handle of rum in hand, and their giant cooler full of alcohol. The ride out to the end of Cayo Jutías over the crystal waters was beautiful. It was also completely chaotic and raucous, with the increasingly drunk Cubans whooping and hollering and making various gestures at us the whole time that we couldn't understand; Rob looked at me at one point and said "I don't know what's going on, but I love it". I wholeheartedly agreed. We went with the flow and took the Cubans up on the beers that they plied us with, and we had a great time laughing along with it all.
Once we arrived at the tip, one of the Cuban guys walked us over to the leeward side of the beach and handed us each a pair of snorkels. Just standing there at ankle depth, we could already see several starfish in the water. We swam out, and for about half an hour, we followed the guy around, while he pointed out tons of things on the ocean floor: countless starfish, a bunch of sea urchins (one of which stuck to Rob's hand for a bit), a few lionfish, and a huge red snapper. Having only ever really seen all these at aquariums or as food, we thought it was just about the coolest thing ever to see all of this marine life out in the wild. We asked the guy if he liked to eat sea urchin, and he seemed really puzzled by the idea; we explained that it was common in some cuisines but kind of expensive, to which he exclaimed: "Here, is gratis!"
The ride back to the main beach was equally rowdy and high-spirited and full of alcohol. The driver of the boat said to us: "Cubans, we are happy people". I really have to agree. Having seen a lot of what they are dealing with at this point, I think it's a strong testament to the spirit of the Cuban people that they generally seem content and are fully making the most of what they have.
By now, Rob was as red as the lobsters that we had eaten for lunch, despite having applied sunscreen several times, and I was feeling a little sunburned in a spot or two as well. So, fortunately, we didn't have too much longer in the sun before we had to pack up and take our colectivo back to Viñales. Doing the math at the end of the day, we paid a total of a little over $40 each for round-trip transportation, a full day of beach gear rental, a generous lobster lunch with cocktails, and a guided boating and snorkeling trip, all of which we enjoyed immensely. The value was astounding.
I also appreciated how unplanned the day was: the colectivo was something we casually arranged the afternoon before, and the boat ride was literally completely unanticipated. In some ways, the spontaneity of it all hearkens back to travel in an older time, when we couldn't scope everything out about a place beforehand, and sometimes had to just show up and see what was up. I can appreciate how connected the world is now, but at least for me, it's been really fun to experience this largely improvised mode of travel again, here in Cuba.
