GOING GREEN
Island nation is world leader in organic food growth and preservation
Cuba has started a new revolution — a green revolution,
The Russians are leaving; the Russians are leaving.
That alarm kept Fidel Castro awake at night in1989 when the Berlin Wall fell down and Soviet Union communism soon came tumbling after.
Castro knew he needed a new cash cow to sustain his unique island nation just off the coast of Florida and he decided tourism was the answer.
To attract more tourists he ordered up a new highway — a very unusual highway hopscotching across a string of small, forested islands protruding into the Caribbean from Cuba’s north shore.
It took 10 years to build the 48-kilometre-long highway out on the Jardines del Rey (Gardens of the King) archipelago and the islands are now becoming Cuba’s fastest growing tourism destination.
Ten separate tropical resorts have been erected on the little islands offering 5,000 rooms and another 5,000 rooms are under construction.
Big dump trucks are still rumbling along the ocean highway carrying limestone boulders to be dumped into the shallow, azure waters to extend the reach of the highway to more distant islands.
The ocean highway has taught Cuba’s government some interesting lessons.
Soon after construction started, their fishing industry and scientists discovered an alarming rise in dead fish, dead flora and disappearing fauna. You just can’t mess with Mother Nature. The causeway was disrupting the natural flow of ocean currents.
Cuba unleashed a major study of ocean currents on its north shore and now the causeway has at least 24 bridges to let currents and fish species get to both sides.
It also triggered a new revolution among Fidel Castro’s leadership group — a green revolution. The island nation today is a world leader on growing organic food and has preserved nearly 25 per cent of the island’s land mass as protected natural wilderness parks.
Still, visitors are advised to drink only bottled water.
The ocean is no more than eight metres deep throughout the archipelago and often just three metres. Mangrove forests sprout from the shallow coral reefs and attract a wide variety of wildlife from fish, to birds to crocodiles to iguana and mongoose.
And of course small charter fishing boats.
The rumbling dump trucks on the causeway have persuaded the large flocks of flamingoes to move further away from the highway, but many can still be seen from the buses carting vacationers out to their resorts.
Maybe the most popular feature of the Jardines del Rey archipelago are its long, pure white beaches. Most are several kilometres long and most are separated from the resorts by thick growths of green shrubs and forests. A network of elevated wooden sidewalks con- nects the beaches to the resorts.
Rest and relaxation are the two top features the Iberostar Esenachos All-Inclusive Resort on Santos Maria claims to offer. Santos Maria is one of the furthest islands connected by the causeway.
You’ll encounter a lot of Canadians out on the Gardens of the King.
Sunwing Travel Group of Toronto offers a seven-day all-inclusive vacation package to the Iberostar resort, which has 504 rooms, five swimming pools, a children’s pool, six restaurants and eight bars. Some of the bars and restaurants are located on the wide stretches of whitesand beaches.
There are rooms in the main hotel and cottages in a quaint village setting cut into the dense mango forest. They are serviced by staff driving golf carts.
There are no permanent residences on the archipelago and hundreds of resort employees are bused daily to and from their homes on the mainland. Weddings and honeymoons are popular at Iberostar Esenachos. Bring your new marriage license to take advantage of special features for honeymooners. An outdoor wedding chapel has been erected on one of the beaches.
The all-inclusive bracelet issued at registration provides three meals a day, snacks and all alcoholic and soft drinks, plus professional stage shows.
The highway across the ocean was closed for two days when it was whipped savagely by Matthew in 2016, the first category 4 hurricane to hit the Caribbean in 10 years. More than 4,000 vacationers stayed off the beaches and found plenty of professional entertainment indoors.
Sunwing drives vacationers 90 minutes out to Santa Maria from the international airport at Santa Clara. The hotel offers excursions back to the mainland to experience Cuban culture. One trip goes to a railway museum in Marcelo Salado where you’ll find 38 steam locomotives on tracks, some of them more than 100 years old.
You can board open train cars and ride a steam train 10 kilometres to Remedios with lots of steam whistling along the way.
The train rolls through villages and even through front yards.
The train museum is part of a sugar cane mill museum. Cuba used to export more than 10 million tons of sugar, mostly to Eastern Europe, but also to the Redpath mill on the Toronto waterfront. Exports today are les than two million tons.
Tourism is the country’s main source of income and Canadians account for 40 per cent of all foreign visitors to Cuba.
Pat Brennan was hosted by the Cuba Tourist Board of Canada, which didn’t review or approve this story.