Towards the East of Cuba

By Dr. Martin Luis.
To travel towards the capital of Cuba or to the rest of the country, eastward or to the "Oriental" provinces, always along the shore, from Levisa Key, one takes the road that leads to Havana, next to the North shore, the most beautiful and pleasant of all, where monotony is not possible for one crosses small picturesque villages. Shortly before you get to Bahia Honda (Deep Bay) village, you are already in a different section from the one left behind.
There is no more mangrove, keys or low shore, but high shore where the mangrove does not grow nor keys can be found. It is the second section of the North coast of which we talked in former issues. It goes almost as far as Varadero, of which we will be talking later on. Up to Havana City, the trip is interesting and amusing, traveling along the Northern coast, next to the blue waters of the Florida Straits which can be seen all the time. The trip along this road to the country capital has already been described in former articles. You may consult "A Trip from Havana to Viñales along the Northern Roads", published in this series.
If one asks a Cuban about directions, one should use the word "Oriente" very carefully. In Cuba, that word means only the five current Eastern provinces, that is: Las Tunas, Holguin, Gramma, Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo. They used to make up the former province of Oriente during the previous political- administrative division. That is why one had better use the name of the provinces in common conversation rather than their orientation in the compass.
In the capital you may lodge in any of the many hotels or in private houses to visit the two groups of beaches that surround the capital. They are commonly known as Western Beaches and Eastern Beaches or Beaches of the Northern Shore, with reference to Havana City.
The first ones are usually rocky and narrow, with deep waters and near the new hotels of the capital. They are not adjacent, but interrupted at times by rocky prominences. They are surrounded by urban areas. In some of them you can breathe the sea air and you can see the boats in the small rivers that cross them. An example of it is Jaimanitas beach and a little further there is Baracoa. Others, like Viriato ( a not very common name) and Marianao are very small and frequented by neighbors. They are not very popular and therefore not very frequently enjoyed by the general public.
The Eastern beaches are very different. They have a continuous length of sand, with not very deep waters into which the rivers that flow may be crossed without difficulty, being the most representative the Boca Ciega (Blind Mouth), or Juztiz, River which can be crossed from bank to bank with the water below your knees. It gives rise to a system of lagoons next to the shore.
The beaches have different names and are all crossed by small rivers. From West to East you find Cojimar beach crossed by the river of the same name that forms, before getting to the coast, a deep cannon or gorge until it reaches the sea. This is due to the fact that there are in the North Coast the heights known as Habana- Matanzas Heights. Unfortunately, the river is contaminated to a certain extent, although there are projects for its purification. Here is the village of the same name, Cojimar Town, famous because it was immortalized by the American writer Ernest Hemingway in his novel "The Old Man and The Sea". Of course, we would suggest the visit to the Finca Vigia Museum, the house where he used to live, not far from Cojímar, in San Francisco de Paula.