2024-03-27: El Nicho
Author: Rob
Cienfuegos is a small but handsome city near the southern coast of the island. It’s one of the wealthier cities in the country, as evidenced by its cleanliness, generally nice upkeep, and relatively expansive retail store scene. All this being said, it’s easy to see the city in a day, so tourists visiting for a few days rely on excursions to nearby attractions. We only had an afternoon and overnight in Cienfuegos, and were a little bummed that we were going to miss some of the natural attractions around the city until our Airbnb host told us that she could arrange a shared taxi that would stop at El Nicho en route to the next city we were visiting. This sounded like the perfect way to see and do everything that we wanted to while staying on schedule.
The next morning our taxi driver arrived to pick us up in his ’57 DeSoto, having already collected the French couple who would be sharing the ride with us. All throughout Cuba there are lots of classic cars, some in excellent condition and others not so much. This one was of the latter breed. In reality the DeSoto was really just a shell of a car. The entire interior had been gutted, stripped, and patched back together, and the original engine replaced with a loud diesel engine, not uncommon in Cuba. I got a kick out of the stickers pasted to the rear windshield as they reminded me of the stickers on the redneck trucks in NY.
El Nicho is a small national park perched high in the mountains, where air plants cling to anything that stays still long enough, including the power lines. The park is centered around a series of waterfalls, most with pristine blue pools of fresh water. The nicest fall is at the top of a short hike up a mountain, but as you climb you’re treated to other pools and waterfalls, all full of a mixture of locals and tourists. We had a lot of fun here, we planned ahead and brought swim trunks so we could take a dip in the pools, and lunch at the restaurant near the base of the mountain was tasty and generous.
The transportation plan, as we understood it, was that we were sharing a taxi with the French people to El Nicho, then they were going back to Cienfuegos with another car while we were proceeding on to Trinidad. None of us were entirely sure what happened here, but somehow their ride fell through, which lead to the driver taking us all back halfway to Cienfuegos so he could find a ride for the French people before taking us on to Trinidad. This was a little annoying, and lead to more time trapped inside an old jalopy than I would have liked, but in the end it all worked out.
