We woke up and had a big desayuno (breakfast) before heading to La Boca, Playa Ancon, and the Marlin Marina. Again it was a delicious 2 course meal starting with fresh fruit – pineapple, passionfruit, mango, and watermelon, with passionfruit juice and coffee. The second course was eggs – I did an omelet with just the eggs, and then put that on fresh bread. David did an omelet with cheese and peppers. Hostal Cuba set a nice table for outside on the villa’s porch, where we could kind of see the water at Playa La Boca.
They also had a very interesting porcelain coffee set, with “Made in occupied Japan” on the back – this meant it was made under the US occupation of Japan in 145-1952. I’m sure there’s a huge collectibles market for this sort of thing out there – the hotel may be sitting on a gold mine.
Since we went to bed so late the night before, we got a late start and had breakfast around 1130AM – so by the time we had finished and set out for the day, it was 1PM. We first walked around La Boca – the views were pretty but the beach was trashy.
It seemed more like a local beach than a tourist beach, and there were lots of Cubans vacationing and enjoying the sun and sands in La Boca. There was also a boardwalk of sorts, where vendors set up selling pizza, ice cream, beer and other novelties to passersby. We noticed the prices however were quite steep – for example, $5 for a Pina Colada. There were several beach villas along the way that all looked very nice, but some that looked not so nice. It was really hit or miss in La Boca.
After that stroll, we immediately headed to Ancon. The beaches there were much nicer than La Boca, and we found a few that were completely private with no people but still some nice palm tree huts to shade yourself with.
At the end of the peninsula there were a few fancy resorts and the Marlin Marina.
We asked the gate guard at the Marlin Marina if he could let us in (it was closed), so we could talk to someone about hiring a boat. Once inside, we met a nice man named Alfredo (Fredo), and we chatted with him about fishing for a while, while standing on the dock.
Unfortunately, he explained that fly fishing in this area wasn’t so good, and the best scenario would be to hire a boat for 4 hours and 300 CUC to do deep sea fishing (not fly). The kinds of fish you could catch were barricuda and kingfish. Elsewhere, he recommended checking out La Bahia de Giròn (The Bay of Pigs), which was on the coast to the West kind of on our way back to Havana, as well as some places on the North side, North of Santa Clara, which we just wouldn’t have the time to be able to get to. We decided to pass on this, but Alfredo did say that we could come back tomorrow and “test out” (anprobar) our rod on the marina.
Fredo from Marlin Marina also mentioned there was a bridge just down the road overlooking a large channel that offered good fishing, depending on the tides.
We would check this out again the following day – now, it was time for our Trinidad adventure to begin.