Moron and the Northern Keys
The drive to Moron from Trinidad is uneventful apart from Neil seeing a Cuban wearing an Aston Villa top…I make an easily winnable bet that there is no way we will see a Port Vale top (my team) anywhere in Cuba.
We have two nights booked at the Hotel Moron as a base for exploring the Northern Keys in particular Cayo Coco. The hotel itself is reminiscent of an eastern European secret police station, but the rooms are clean and the beds are comfortable and that is all we ask for…
We set off the next morning for the longest and either most exciting or traumatic day of the trip, whichever way you care to look at it. Heading out early, we reached the island of Cayo Coco via the causeway from the mainland, a 30km road just above sea level. Vivid pink of the Greater Flamingo flocks found here could be seen in the distance but before heading to the flamingos we choose to head off to the uninhabited island of Cayo Romano, as the view from the lighthouse is rated as being worth experiencing and there are plenty of birding opportunities too. We follow an excellent road (for Cuban standards) as far as what can be best described as an interesting looking bridge, that spans the tidal flow at the last few buildings of a fishing settlement. We continue for a while along this road that skirts mudflats and low coastal forest until our driver (not named to save embarrassment) manages to lose a huge pothole in the growing heat haze and we manage to puncture both passenger side tyres…
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Cayo Romano |
Realising that we are a fair way from civilisation and have only a mouthful of water each we have to make a choice as to where to find help. We are 3km from the lighthouse but chances are we will find no-one there and then we would face an extra 6km hike. We opt for the long hike back to the bridge, about 15-20km away… and within minutes the sun opts to revert from hiding behind clouds and make an appearance and the day begins to heat up. After three hours plus of a sweat inducing and throat parching yomp we make it back to the bridge area where we find to our eternal gratitude a gaggle of fishermen and construction workers congregated around the out buildings.
In a mixture of bad Spanish and broken English we explain what has happened, and ask if they can help, and again to our eternal gratitude they offer us a lift to the nearest Transtur office a further 20km away on Cayo Coco. So we pile into the cramped cab of a large construction vehicle which has plastic tubing doubling as a gear stick and the roof is held on by string, (of which the driver seems proud of) and scoot off towards Cayo Coco with other workers hanging off the wing-mirrors as we go.
Somewhat relieved that we managed to get out of this scrape in much better shape than we thought we would do, we are dropped off at the rental office where we find that the hotel is one of the all inclusive package deals and will only serve food + drink to its customers only. We must offer thanks to the Canadian gentleman who went and fetched us some water, he will never know after 4-5 hours how good that tasted…
Luckily, I have the car rental agreement in my backpack, and the representative contacts some mechanics and we head back to the stranded car and get the spare wheel fitted in no time. Unfortunately, the wheel/tyre the mechanics have with them will not fit our car (Hyundai Sonata…christened Frank due to our lack of imagination), so we head back to the office. Now starts a frantic search for where he may be able to find a tyre or wheel that will fit (frantic in a Cuban dictionary does have a completely different meaning to the Oxford English dictionary as we found out!). Several hours passed and we had no idea what was going on.
Eventually, when we found that the nearest wheel for the car was 100km away and there was no way that we could get that brought over to Cayo Coco, the mechanics went back to the car with a wheel that they thought would fit. However, they managed to get a puncture themselves on their way to fix the car. So they ended up heading back to the Transtur office. It was then decided that they would replace our car with the 4×4 Jeep that the mechanics had been using. We wonder to this day if “Frank” has been left there on three wheels in the middle of Cayo Romano? So over eight hours after the original puncture, we are back at the hotel Moron just after nightfall.
Having not eaten since early morning we are feeling famished but the awful buffet here does nothing for us so having had a hard and in the end of it lucky day we find solace in the form of our friend, the Mojito.
We even feel brave enough to venture into the local nightclub after a friendly (?) invite from one of the dancers who were performing in the hotel bar. We had been tipped off by Andy in what to expect in the Moron disco and thought that we can’t return back home without experiencing this…
So here we go. Three lads all pretty knackered, hungry and slightly worse for wear after a few cocktails stumble into the bar, we have about $20 between us having not being able to change cheques earlier in the day. We order a beer and before we have turned around, we are surrounded by a group of the local chicas (all of which are absolutely stunning) we feel that the day may well have improved!! Although we are only seen as walking wallets, we are quite happy to have some attractive female company.
I find it quite amusing that they obviously saw us as a way to get free drinks for a night and that they may make some cash by taking us back to a room in the town. Whereas we were knackered, skint and happy to have some company…more a case of whom was getting more out of this encounter.
Anyhow enough philosophising, we were ushered to a table placed on the edge of the dance floor and therefore in the firing line of any gags the Transvestite or stand up comedian could have a go at us. The girls took great glee in trying to explain that it was man in drag who was miming to the truly awful Whitney Houston tune “I Will Always Love You” while serenading a dollar bill. The tragic-comedy moment of the trip. We notice that the only other westerners in the club are two middle aged men, both in the company of stunningly beautiful Cubanas. We end up in a moral discussion and decide that our new found friends will not be very happy when they find out we have little or no money since it’s our wallets they are attracted too, so we make our excuses and leave.
We pondered the fact that during all of this the attitude of Cuban men was quite intriguing. We couldn’t believe that the girls that approached us didn’t have partners or at least have caught the eye of some of the local men folk, yet we saw no examples of Latino machismo at all. Maybe it is a case that the dollar is indeed king??
