Broken, Bitten, Burned and Blistered in Baracoa

Before I get to covering our stay in Baracoa, it is important to mention a little about our private car from Santiago to Baracoa. Leaving at 6AM was pretty early, but I’m glad we did. First of all it wasn’t too hot and we got to watch the sun rise over the misty jungle – beautiful! Our drivers were really nice they let us stop to take photos and also bought us some coffee along the way. The only ‘Cuban’ aspect to the trip was that because the car was so old they had to MacGyver it along the way. The radiator was leaking so after the first few hours they had to stop every 20 minutes or so to refill the radiator with water. After a beautiful costal drive, a trip through the mountains and then down through the jungle we arrived just before lunch time in Baracoa.

The owner of the casa particular where we were staying told us that people always come to Baracoa and then want to stay longer. The natural scenery and the relaxed pace of life is amazing, however given our series of unfortunate incidents we were ready to leave after 2 1/2 days there.

Burned

The first thing my sister wanted to do when we got to Baracoa was go to the beach. We had been in Cuba for six days and we hadn’t gone to the beach yet. So since the beach was about 10 minutes walking away from where we were staying it was the first thing we wanted to do. However we made the fatal mistake of leaving without putting sunscreen on.  A local was giving us directions and pointing out various points on the landscape so we didn’t realise how hot it was on the walk. By the time we got to the beach our shoulders were already pink. We applied sunscreen but it was too late and we only stayed for an hour before having to head back! The beach itself was quite nice – dark clean sand, clear water. This was the free beach, called the ‘black beach’ which locals use, but when we were there it was almost completely empty. There was also a tourist ‘white beach’ with white sand, but we didn’t feel like paying the money and walking further to see it.

 Blistered

On our second day in Baracoa, we decided to stay out of the sun to let our burns heal. It was my idea to go on a hike up El Yunque (the Anvil) – my sister blames me, as she told me later a five hour hike is not her idea of a vacation! We paid in Baracoa for a driver out to the base of the mountain and a guide for the hike (only in Spanish unfortunately). The hike was a about 2 1/2 hours up and 2 1/2 hours down. We saw lots of cool things along the way – pineapples, cacao seeds, coconuts, pigs, chickens and a variety of birds and insects. Our guide was quite good at talking about what we were seeing and answering all of our questions. The only detractor was the pace a which we were hiking – it was definitely quicker than a leisurely walk. It became quite demanding in the second part of the ascent, as the inclination was quite steep. There were parts of the trail where stairs were carved out of the mud.

After abandoning my sister at the halfway point because of her severely blistered feet (where she still had a great view), I finally made it all the way to the top. I thought it was definitely worth all the effort and sweat – especially for the view. There is no road or other way to access the top, so the hike is the only way. However, this hike didn’t seem so popular, we didn’t see any other groups the whole time we were climbing.

After an intense morning we chilled a bit at a big hotel on the hill (a car accessible alternative to have a panoramic view of the town. Here we had cocktails and lunch before continuing the cycle of pain in the afternoon.

Bitten

By bitten I mean more like stung. In order to cool off from the hike we decided to go back to the beach for an evening swim before dinner. The beach had a few more people, but was still pretty empty. We had been in and out of the water for about an hour when my sister said “Ow, what’s that?!?” I wasn’t sure what she was referring to, but after she started screaming and doing a crazy dance in the water I knew. A jellyfish. I told her to get out of the water ASAP, but by the time she got out the whole area from her hips to her knees were covered in jellyfish stings.

She made so much commotion that some locals came over and asked what was wrong – luckily I remembered the word in Spanish. They reassured us that as long as the stings weren’t on her face she’d be fine. They recommended hot sand and Benadryl. I recommended urine – as I had seen on the super-reliable-source-of-all-knowledge TV show Friends.

It took quite a few days for the stings to go away, some even blistered, but no lasting damage done. Except for the fact that  for the rest of the trip every time we got into open water we were paranoid about jellyfish!

Broken

We were so exhausted both days that we didn’t see much of the nightlife of Baracoa. The first night we went to a weekly street party, but there were only locals and we felt a little out of place, so we ended up going home early. The second night we couldn’t even muster up the energy to go out. I had to be up early the next day to secure tickets back to Santiago (to make sure were didn’t pay another 120 CUC!) Baracoa was definitely beautiful and is a must for anyone who likes outdoor activities and we probably could have stayed longer, but we were looking forward to going back to somewhere where nature wouldn’t by biting us in the butt!

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