No hay fuego en Cienfuegos

A town named for a hundred fires,
Yet not a match nor a lighter to be found.

In its spoken form Cuban Spanish is notable for its tendency to drop a little from the end of words; something which can be more than a little confusing for those of us who struggle enough recognising them in full. It may be for this reason or perhaps simply a colloquialism that the south coast city of Cienfuegos seems most often to be pronounced Cien-feu, significantly shortening the “fire” part of its name. Then again this could be the Cuban sense of humour, for when I found myself there the town was noticeably short of the means of starting one.

Our charter boat for the week was a Bavaria 50; cavernous a little ragged and laid out for fair-weather marina hopping as befits her trade. Ideal for most that would be asked of her though perhaps lacking for some of the modern electronics and stain-removal products I’m used to on charter holidays. I can also personally attest to her lack of suitability for an easterly near gale fetching over the entire Atlantic. Still at least when we were pooped the water was warm and the schoolboy in me revels in a snoozing cockpit sunbather getting unexpectedly drenched.

The skipper had arrived early and made a brave, if blokeish stab at provisioning the boat courtesy of a farmers market recommended by his cabby. There were however one or two essentials he hadn’t been able to find. A vast island full of lush, verdant, fertile open spaces, Cuba should be the bread-basket of the Caribbean however fresh bread was one thing he’d failed to turn up. Also, rather curiously for the location, fresh limes for the rum-and-cokes and fresh mint for the mojitos had also eluded him.

But most serious of all, when he returned from the market and tried to put the kettle on for a cup of tea (you can take the bloke out of Britain but you can’t take Britain out of the bloke) there was absolutely no means of lighting the stove – no matches, no lighter, nothing.

Okay, not a life-or-death situation, but endearingly close to one for the bulldog breed. A night was planned in the adjacent Club Cienfuegos, a colonial relic in unusually good nick for Cuba where we would be sated with a variety of cheap rum drinks while watching ample bottoms wrapped in tight, white jeans gyrating the night away to a local band massacring a succession of fading classics. The next few hours were a little Abba, a touch of The Beatles and an awful lot of booze. The tea could wait for today.

But only for today!

Bonfire of the bureaucracies

I noticed when I arrived that the little marina in Cienfuegos had more offices for officials than it had pontoons for boats. None of us had a warm, fuzzy feeling about the efforts our departure would entail. Full employment in the communist paradise might mean a mountain of paperwork but to be fair it did have the odd benefit too. We were, for example, spared having to remember keypad codes to get onto the pontoons; hiring a security guard presumably being cheaper than an electronic gate.

Full employment didn’t stretch to the toilets though, which appeared to have been repurposed as a latrine while the flush was out of action. It looked like at least a dozen people had taken a dump in there since it was last cleaned out. Perhaps a place to break the golden rule of no number-twos on board while in port, although with us planning to set sail in a few hours anyway we were able to hold our colons ’til we reached open water.

Departing a Cuban port typically involves an unholy trinity of officials – harbourmaster, border police and immigration – the white, the green and the holy blue who would typically board the vessel en masse to clear us out. This process involved a search of the boat (for what I have no idea and I doubt the guy doing the searching did either), checking our passports and inspecting the ship’s papers, crew list and Despacho – an itinerary of ports we would be visiting on our trip. This being our first departure we would also have to contend with the charter company’s paperwork and pay our “departure tax”.

Some effective division of labour seemed appropriate (if a bit un-Cuban) so two of us set off into town to finish our victualling while the rest got stuck into the red tape.

For neither did things go as well as hoped.

A quest for fire

Cienfuegos’ Malecón is a broad, sweeping arterial road leading past the marina and into the heart of the city past seemingly endless examples of colonial architectural exuberance in varied states of decay and repair. This is iconic Cuba, the tumbledown fading glories of a once prosperous land now desiccated and decaying yet with a heart still solidly beating. Cienfuegos won’t give you the war-zone sense of Centro Habana – glimpses of life going on amidst almost post-apocalyptic decay – but nonetheless it still has that signature trait of penury in paradise.

We eventually strolled up to the main drag, a charming, tree-lined affair with low buildings and fresh, open spaces that instantly smacks of a sleepy seaside town. Cuban shops can be hard to pigeonhole based on the wares or words in the windows so we were a little unsure where to try first but when we spotted a cigar store we thought we’d be on a winner.

We were wrong.

The cigar store had plenty of cigars in stock but nothing to light them with, however the attendant did suggest another store a few blocks away. They in turn suggested another store a few blocks the other way. As we were passed from store to store our desperation steadily increased. Whether it was a “dollar store” –  the tourist only affairs stocked liberally with alcoholic beverages and an indifferent selection of tinned goods and snacks – or a “peso store” – primarily for the locals and generally staffed by two bored and disinterested “assistants” and occasionally a security guard (protecting what I’ll never know) – we were greeted always with the trademark Cuban shrug of resignation usually accompanied with a suggestion of another store to try. The only exception was a particularly resourceful lady who mimed banging two rocks together to spark a fire as an alternative for us.

Someone suggested we tried the local gas station which seemed a great idea until the vendor pointed out that selling matches in a gas station wasn’t the safest of ideas by means of a “click-click-boom” mime which he concluded with a long, satisfying draw on his cigarette.

This had become far more important than a cold teakettle; this had become an issue of male pride. The gauntlet had been thrown down. We simply couldn’t fail to find a box of matches or a lighter in a large city in perhaps the most iconic cigar exporting nation on the planet. Useless pair of prats wouldn’t do us justice!

We took to trying to bribe passing locals whenever we saw them smoking but even an offer of hard currency couldn’t tear their precious lighters or matches from them. Clearly Cienfuegos’ shortage of fuego was a serious problem indeed. Perhaps it was in fact named for a hundred arsonists and thus matches and lighters were banned. Perhaps lighting a fire was considered subversive. Perhaps Fidel had been worried about the locals setting fire to his beard.

After two hours of effort and easily two-dozen stores we threw in the towel. We didn’t find the limes or the mint either.

A quest for freedom

Back at the boat there had been some extended haggling over some of the ports on our Despacho, the charter company being less than keen on one of our desired landfalls and ourselves being very keen on not having to write out another of the damned things. After negotiations concluded a succession of credit cards were then run through possibly the worlds slowest payment machine ’til one was found that didn’t ultimately trace back to an embargoed US bank (harder than you might think in today’s globalised world). By the time we were ready to be cleared out by the unholy trinity it was lunchtime and they weren’t all back together until two in the afternoon. But we did get away in the end for a roaring and very late sail to a destination that wasn’t on that dratted Despacho in the first place. It was simply about the only place left we could reach before midnight.

For sure Cuba can be a frustrating country at times, especially if you can’t go with the flow and forego the pace, convenience and amenities you take for granted elsewhere. Yet whether they’re helping or hindering there’s a charming innocence to the Cuban people, an endearing lack of show and political sophistication that is a pleasure in itself. Chartering a boat is also a great way to see parts of a unique country that the package-holiday and five-star hotel types would almost certainly never experience. And as an off-the-beaten track destination for yachties the traffic is refreshingly light too.

As for the teakettle we didn’t leave empty handed after all. We traded a bottle of rum for a lighter with a boat-load of Czech water-sports enthusiasts and later in the week a Canadian live-aboard couple who had done far more preparation than us (i.e. any) kindly donated a couple of boxes of matches.

For it would appear that the great match and lighter shortage is both more pervasive and more enduring than we first thought.  Perhaps Fidel really was worried about them setting fire to his beard after all.