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CORALREPUBLIC Cuba
2005
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Trip
dates: |
29 October – 7
November 2005 |
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Boat
/ resort: |
2 nights in
Havana’s Hotel Sevilla, 6 nights at the
Hotel Club Santa Lucia |
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Dive
centre: |
Shark’s Friends
in Santa Lucia |
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Photo-friendly?: |
Day boats with
basic facilities. No camera room or charging stations. |
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Number
of dives: |
10 in 5 days of
diving. |
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Diving
conditions: |
Clear most of the
time, with occasional showers. Although we travelled in the wake of Wilma, the most powerful hurricane on record till then, it had gone through the western part of the island and we had
no signs of it in Santa Lucia. The dive sites were all similar, with reef
tops at about 20m and no walls. We had relatively short bottom times and
Nitrox would have been an advantage. The shark dive was special in all
senses, see below. Otherwise, the diving here is pretty uninteresting. They
seem to have fished the place out. |
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Comments: |
Our trip was
arranged by Abando. Yes, I had said I would never
use them again, but since this was organised in Spain I did not complaint. In
fact, they did OK this time, changing our initial plans to dive in Maria la Gorda for Santa Lucia. Maria la Gorda,
at the westernmost part of the island, was closed a couple of days before our
trip because of Wilma. The agency re-booked us to Santa Lucia in the
north-eastern coast, a place famous for a bull shark dive. We spent the
first and last nights of our trip in Havana. We liked the Sevilla,
a bit posh, but charming and well located in town. We flew with Cubana to and from Santa Lucia (careful, they charge for
extra weight! And don’t negotiate). We met three fellow Spaniards along the way,
a couple and another guy, with whom we got along very well. In Santa Lucia,
we had some trouble with the hotel. They gave us rooms close to the guest
entertainment area, and they had very loud music and shows
every night. We couldn’t sleep! We asked to be moved away, but they did not
grant us this for three nights. The new rooms were nicer and calm. I really
don’t know why they refused to move us the same day we asked; there was
hardly anybody else around but us. The dive centre
is located in the hotel compound. The boats were quite OK and the crew
smiling and helpful. We were crazy excited about the shark dive. Bulls are
probably the most dangerous sharks of all, and these guys were the only ones
I knew of back then doing a dedicated feeding dive. The dive site is
on a wreck in a channel between the mainland and an islet where a Spanish
fort used to be. It can only be dived between tides, otherwise the currents
are impossible to deal with. You either jump
in from a boat or from a pier very close to where the stern of the wreck
comes up to 5 m of the surface. The dive centre crew usually bring to the
pier the bait that the divemaster will use to
attract the sharks. You descend along the wreck until you hit a sandbank at
30 m (yes, it’s a very deep dive, no novices allowed), sit along it at right
angles to where the divemaster, without any mailcoat or other protection, feeds by hand the big bull
shark females that turn up. We did this dive twice and at least there were a
good half-dozen of them around. They tell you to yell into your regulator if
they come too close. Some in our group lost their voice during those dives. In the first
shark dive, I tried to use my strobes, but the sharks swim close to the
bottom and there is too much sand in the water. My pics were so full of
backscatter I had to give up. Also, one of the sharks got very interested in
the strobes (I guess because of the electric field they generate) and came
straight for it, making me duck and regret being there very much. No question
of giving up, though. Two days later we had rebuilt the courage to go again. On the second
shark dive, the guys from the dive centre failed to show up with the bait. We
were going to miss our window to dive the place. No problems. Lazaro, our divemaster, told me to jump with the rest of the group in
15 minutes, then jumped with a speargun
to harpoon a few fishes for the feeding! Down we all
went, made our way down and found him below happily ready with a bunch of
catches. I sat a bit farther away this time and did not turn on the strobes.
Not the best pics I’ve taken, but I was quite proud of myself nevertheless. Apart from those
two memorable dives, we will always remember the superior drinking sessions
by the pool (free mojitos, even if a bit weak for my taste), and the drunken
party nights, so much so that at least once, one of us could not find his way
back to the room. That’s Cuba –
Guateque hasta que salga el sol, Compay! |
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