BAY OF PIGS

And so to our last call, Playa Larga on the “Bahía de Cochinos” – Bay of Pigs. After Fidel took power in 1959, the US – which had maintained a series of puppet governments since independence in 1898 – determined not to lose its grip on Cuba and arranged an invasion in a bid to overthrow the Revolution. Some 1,500 dissatisfied Cuban refugees were trained by the CIA in Guatemala and shipped to the south coast of Cuba for an opposed landing. The raids to take out the Cuban air force on the ground the previous day were a failure, and after the “mercenaries” – as they are called in Cuba – had disembarked the ships were sunk by Cuban planes and gunfire from the shore – Russian self-propelled guns. Fidel himself scored a hit with one, which we saw in the Museum of the Revolution. The bedraggled invaders quickly saw that the game was up. A small number were killed and the rest were taken prisoner and eventually returned to the US in exchange for food and medicines. This event led directly on to the Cuban missile crisis, however Fidel was out of his league at this level of power politics! The Russians offered him nuclear missiles to protect the island, which he accepted, but Kruschev had another programme! When the US protested at the delivery of the missiles and blockaded the island, the Russians “backed down” and negotiated an exchange with the US, getting exactly what they wanted. They would withdraw the missiles from Cuba if the US would withdraw their nuclear missiles from Turkey. Fidel – who had his own shopping list which included an end to the embargo and the closure of the Guantanamo Bay base – was not invited to the negotiations and left hopping mad! I did two dives and saw two of the small boats in which the invaders came ashore, sunk in shallow water. Playa Larga (Long Beach) was one of the two landing sites. Today it is a little fishing village in the throes of becoming a tourism centre – every second house was a casa particular, some serving good food. It is just next to the Cienaga swamp – at nearly half a million hectares the biggest swamp in the Caribbean and a paradise for birds, including flamingos. It is also a national park and a Ramsar site. I did 2 bird-watching trips, seeing the tiny bee humming-bird in someone’s back garden. Also a Cuban black hawk and lots of water birds. Magda meanwhile enjoyed the beach… Cake delivery!!!!!!