Downing
Contributor
I checked my dive log book to see where we went, but all I wrote down was "Cuba," lol. Googled "sea turtle conservancy Cuba," and Cayo Largo popped up. Bingo. Googled hotels there and found the Sol Cayo Largo. That's where we stayed.
Frankly, the whole diving experience there kind of sucked. We flew from Havana, where we had a blast, to Cayo Largo. We were then bussed to the hotel. Like I said, the only Cubans who are allowed to live there are the workers. Consequently, all the guests were from elsewhere, mostly Europe. Surprisingly for Cuba, it all felt very colonial.
We were bussed to the dive op, which was a fair distance away, maybe five miles. Sign up took forever. After finally getting through that process, we were told to load our gear into crates, then put the crates on a wagon. I could see the dive boat about 30 feet away and was thinking, wtf? We then dragged the wagons to the boat and unloaded the crates onto the boat. Then we unloaded our gear, put the empty crates back on the wagons and dragged the wagons back to the dive op.
This was, frankly, stupid and the whole experience that first morning made clear to me that these guys really didn't know what they were doing. Sure enough, there were no introductions, no boat resource review, no dive briefs. For all I know we dived the same spots over and over. Kind of looked like it. The staff was nice enough, and they tried hard. I know it's not easy to build a business out of nothing and with very little, if any, training. We just got on with it.
So it was ten days of bussing back and forth to the dive op with mediocre diving in the middle. At night we were stuck at the hotel because there was literally no place else to go. My wife and I were bored out of our minds. We wished we had just stayed behind in Havana, where there was so much to do and see. Cuba was so very cool, but where we were didn't feel like Cuba at all.
The Cayo Largo Santuario de las Tortugas Marinas en Cuba, the turtle sanctuary next to the dive op, was the highlight of our stay on Cayo Largo.
Edit: Having read what I just wrote, I've come to the realization that I was wrong about the "whole diving experience there kind of sucked." No "kind of." It just sucked.
Frankly, the whole diving experience there kind of sucked. We flew from Havana, where we had a blast, to Cayo Largo. We were then bussed to the hotel. Like I said, the only Cubans who are allowed to live there are the workers. Consequently, all the guests were from elsewhere, mostly Europe. Surprisingly for Cuba, it all felt very colonial.
We were bussed to the dive op, which was a fair distance away, maybe five miles. Sign up took forever. After finally getting through that process, we were told to load our gear into crates, then put the crates on a wagon. I could see the dive boat about 30 feet away and was thinking, wtf? We then dragged the wagons to the boat and unloaded the crates onto the boat. Then we unloaded our gear, put the empty crates back on the wagons and dragged the wagons back to the dive op.
This was, frankly, stupid and the whole experience that first morning made clear to me that these guys really didn't know what they were doing. Sure enough, there were no introductions, no boat resource review, no dive briefs. For all I know we dived the same spots over and over. Kind of looked like it. The staff was nice enough, and they tried hard. I know it's not easy to build a business out of nothing and with very little, if any, training. We just got on with it.
So it was ten days of bussing back and forth to the dive op with mediocre diving in the middle. At night we were stuck at the hotel because there was literally no place else to go. My wife and I were bored out of our minds. We wished we had just stayed behind in Havana, where there was so much to do and see. Cuba was so very cool, but where we were didn't feel like Cuba at all.
The Cayo Largo Santuario de las Tortugas Marinas en Cuba, the turtle sanctuary next to the dive op, was the highlight of our stay on Cayo Largo.
Edit: Having read what I just wrote, I've come to the realization that I was wrong about the "whole diving experience there kind of sucked." No "kind of." It just sucked.
