An expedition to the flats is predicated on
teamwork, and success is often dependent on your guide. He poles you gondola-fashion,
and also acts as your bird-dog: Yoandry had exceptional eyesight, and put us
onto plenty of fish. It’s a constant process of hide and seek, and you need to
be an opportunist par excellence. Gliding through this lonely terrain is an
impressive experience. Shoals of mullet mill and swirl: herons stalk the
margins, ignoring you like wine waiters; there are arthritic mangrove clusters,
mysterious finger channels, strand-lines of sugary sand where spume bowls along
like tumbleweed. At times, outer Mangrovia can seem eerie, a tangled seascape
by JG Ballard. When the sun shines, it enjoys a severe beauty.
When
the sun shines, it enjoys a severe beauty.
We were dogged by a cold front, which made
the going tough. One morning over at Playa Judío (Jew Beach seems a strange
place name. I agree), the skies suddenly turned livid, and warm rain began
slicing across the cays. It was just the sort of weather you might appreciate
for a Highland spate river, hut entirely unwelcome here. As it cleared, however,
the hay began thronging with honks embarking on their Happy Hour. Everywhere,
fins were slitting the surface like scissored silk. Although the bottom was
claggy — I felt I was wading on crème brûlée — for the rest of the morning we
took fish after fish, as they fed hard on crablets and shrimp. This was our
best session, yet by the afternoon the place was as bare of bones as Old Mother
Hubbard’s cupboard. It’s an intense, unpredictable business — es la pesca.
It
was just the sort of weather you might appreciate for a Highland spate river,
hut entirely unwelcome here.
After a long day on the Hats, you’re ready
to stand fully clothed under your shower (watch those controls!) to sluice off
the brine, sunscreen and fish slime - then it’s time to Dial M for Mojito.
There’s a lively little bar serving good, simple cocktails at less than two
quid a pop, and it’s amazing how a Mojito will slip down the exhausted angler’s
throat like light ale. The wine is probably best avoided. When it comes to
catering, I wonder if the government doesn’t operate a Counter Tourism Unit:
the food here is bland and occasionally resembles roadkill. You’d think they
could rustle up a jar of honey or some seafood. The highlight of dinner was
rummaging for dessert in the Nestlé freezer — all Communist countries seem to
make delicious ice cream.
It’s
time to Dial M for Mojito
When first I visited Cuba — during the
‘Special Period’ following the collapse of the Soviet empire — there were
drastic shortages. People wore banana-leaf sandals, used Chinese toothpaste for
washing, and it’s said that in the absence of any cheese the pizza stalls were
improvising with melted condoms. I’m no Sugarcane Romantic, but thin seem a
little better now. Unlike the segregated tourist resorts in Cayo Coco, La
Casona is open to the locals, and they drop by for rum and Populares (cheap
cigarettes allegedly made from the sweepings of tobacco-factory floors). But
the average wage is still something like US$20 a month, so it wasn’t as liberal
as it sounds when their government announced recently that all citizens were
flow free to buy their own real estate. That the official newspaper Granma is
popular because it’s cheaper than lavatory paper says much about the current
regime, along with journalism in general.
Unlike
the segregated tourist resorts in Cayo Coco, La Casona is open to the locals,
and they drop by for rum and Populares
There’s virtually no nightlife for the
visitor to Brasil. It’s a world away from the fleshpots of (he capital, with
its pulsating music scene and spandex-clad mulattas shimmying like reef fish
through the gloom. There’s no hustling, unless you count the large lady with
her bucket of mangoes. or that chap at the payphone with a hawk on his
shoulder. One evening, the guides turned up for a meal and a singsong, but we
were spared the previous year’s fiesta which included stand-up comedy from the
local schoolmaster, and some amateur cabaret during which I was involved in a
magic trick that conjured up a large foam phallus (I was later persuaded to
perform my punk-era pogo-stick dance). Sometimes it’s a relief just to slump
quietly on a bar stool and sip Bacardi with your son and heir.
Brasil
at night is a world away from the fleshpots of (he capital, with its pulsating
music scene and spandex-clad mulattas shimmying like reef fish through the
gloom.
Back in 1963, JFK laid in a supply of 1,500
Upmann cigars, before slapping his embargo on Cuba. The day Obama finally lifts
it, Raúl Castro will no longer have a Yanqui bogeyman to blame for all his
nation’s hardships. On the whole, Americans don’t visit: but there is one who
still looms large in Cuban folklore, and the Romano archipelago was one of his
happiest hunting founds. Hemingway patrolled the area during World War II
ostensibly searching for U-boats (it was a handy pretext for getting fuel for
his marlin cruiser); he never engaged the enemy, bur did shoot himself in the
knee whilst trying to inscribe his initials with bullets on a shark’s head. He
liked the manatee paella hereabouts (those were the days). The area is
graphically described in his posthumously published Islands in the Stream, a
manuscript he cannibalized to create The Old Man and the Sea; I’ve long
relished his letter maintaining, ‘All the symbolism that people say is shit…
The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man.’ In exasperation at all his
fishing, his wife once castrated all 57 of Don Ernesto’s pet cats whilst he was
away. Papa presented his Marlin Tournament cup in 1960 to Fidel himself, and
his teammate Che, but felt the contest had been rigged. Perish the thought.
Back
in 1963, JFK laid in a supply of 1,500 Upmann cigars, before slapping his
embargo on Cuba.
There may be no billfish in the shallows we
explored, but you do sometimes encounter a couple of species as formidable as
any big game from the Gulf Stream. The tarpon – and aerobatic member of the
herring clan – can grow as large as a man, and if you hook one on your fly rod
you will have your own personal Missile Crisis. I have been lucky enough to
take dozens in the past, but they are migratory and this time we only saw a
couple. However, we did enjoy brisk sport with barracuda. This much maligned
predator lurks in lagoons and watery lay-bys, where slower fish are terminated
with extreme prejudice. Barry the Bad ‘Cuda sports hellacious dentition, and
strikes like chain lightning. He will take a fly, but is also partial to
spinning lures chugged across the surface. In his second day, James hooked a
serious unit weighing more than 30lb, and needed the guide’s help to hoist
aboard after 20 minutes of slam-dunking combat. Cuba is big on species variety:
despite the adverse conditions, we never suffered a blank day.
However,
we did enjoy brisk sport with barracuda.
My only disappointment was the scarcity of
that most sought-after species of the Holy Flats Trinity, the elusive permit,
Trachinotus falcatus, a radiant, dome-headed denizen of the deeps that
sometimes feeds inshore but is exasperatingly difficult to fool with an
artificial ‘fly’. It tends to spurn your overtures like an expensive blonde.
Permit hunting is feast or famine: the previous year, I hooked four in one
morning, landing two (for me, an unprecedented feat of piscicapture). This
time, they simply would not oblige. Yoandry did pole us down one flat where
there were several skulking about – one looked to be in the 20lb class – but
they stubbornly ignored every crab pattern we tried. I’ve heard of anglers
trying for a decade before landing a permit; it is the sort of fish tat haunts
your dreams.
We decided to rack up a few numbers on our
last day by casting streamers into channels and ‘honey holes’ for snappers and
jacks, in a zone nicknamed the Cojones de Don Kiko. But it was really the
bonefish we had come for, and there was just time for a final wade down a long
spit of pale sand which had previously been kind to us. I opened up with a nice
seven-pounder, followed by three more. By now, though, James had hit his
stride, and he soon outfished me. To his coeval Yoandry’s delight, the insolent
youth began to heckle me each time he set the steel and his rod arched: ‘What’s
the matter – don’t you want one too?’
The sea is the sea. The old man is an old
man. So it goes.
