THE CRUISING GUIDE TO CUBA: Introduction

Moor alongside the guardhouse at the base of the flagpole and present your papers. The last time we were here, checking-in took not more than five minutes and we were given permission to depart in the morning without having to return to the dock, so request this facility.

Although I do have reports of some boaters being recently met with puzzled looks, we ourselves have been offered all kinds of assistance by the authorities here, and our logbook once noted that they were the most helpful officials we'd met.

You will probably be asked to moor a Sittle way out from the dock and among the other fishing boats at anchor. The holding is excellent anywhere in the harbor so just make sure you're out of the main channel, and dinghy back ashore to have a look around.

Leave the tender at the dock, walk between the warehouses near the Guarda Frontera post to the main gate and let the gaieman know you're leaving. Strange sights await you following (he road round to the right.

Grim Eastern-Block concrete apartment-buildings, miserable huts, nicer streets with neat dwellings, a baseball stadium, and squealing pigs contrasting with children playing happily at the side of the road.

The walls of the more primitive huts among the mangroves are made of roots bound into wali-sections and they are peopled by charcoal-burners using only the most rudimentary of techniques (they don't exclude the oxygen). There's even a tiny rural boatyard where you' 11 see boats being carvel-planked at the side of the road.