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Cayo Guano del Este again
From Cienfuegos we set off to spend time in the southern cays of Cuba. We left Cienfuegos and headed to Cayo Guano del Este where we hoped to spend a quiet night. It was a long downwind sail and we arrived finding just one other sailboat.
However after going below for dinner around 7:30 when we went back up into the cockpit we found we were surrounded by 7 catamarans, charterers and they were nearly all partying aboard. Then the wind rose and we were stuck in the middle of drunken charterers on catamarans with guts of 30 knots. Not a good position for us, but little we could do, so John slept in the cockpit with the drag alarm on and ready to spring into action. He reported the next morning that the noisy partying continued till the early hours, and he slept very little. We were well away from there at daybreak.
Cayo Largo briefly
We stopped at Cayo Largo for the night so that we could dingy into the marina and grab a few minutes of wifi. We didn’t check with the Guarda Fronteras as it was pointless and luckily we got a half hour of wifi without any issues.
Rosario Cays
Early in the morning we were off to the Rosario Cays via the outside route. It was a fairly good downwind sail arriving at the Cayo Del Rosarios in the afternoon we carefully made our way in through the reef. The anchorage area is very large, but it took us a while to find an area that was deep sand, the rest was shallow sand over reef or just reef.
This anchorage is just wonderful. Inside the reef so not rolly, with a great breeze and far enough off shore to stop mosquitoes. A short while later the Cuban park rangers crossed from the neighboring island – Cayo Cantiles where their camp is located. Their mission was to sell us lobsters. They were not interested in the rum, just wanting 5 CUC ($5.00) per lobster. John bought 2 for dinner. These guys said no photos, guess, as they are the park rangers, they just loved Chico. In fact the following day they arrived with more lobster for us but free fish for Chico’s dinner. They also invited us to cross to visit Cayo Cantiles, which we never had time to.
The following days we spent exploring the area. We dingied all along the shoreline of Cayo Rosario passed the mangroves stopping to pull the dingy onto the beach. There we walked and beach combed the shoreline which we both love doing.
We took the dingy between the shallow reef and the shore all the way to a wonderful beach in another bay on the other side of the Cay. There again we walked and explored, John had his bathing suit on and swam, and I just jumped into the water to cool off clothes and all. The water was just wonderful, crystal clear, with wonderful blues and turquoises, just exquisite.
In the afternoons we snorkeled. The reef was lovely, full of corals and fish. There were live conch, fish we rarely see and of course huge barracudas, which were too friendly and came too close.
We did see a few other boats, but on the whole we were all alone in the Cayo Rosario anchorage. It was a memorable and wonderful few days.
