Snorkelling and Safari in Cuba!

As promised in my previous blog here is a little more information about my favourite excursion whilst in Cuba!

Before we travelled I done some research on the internet about our local area, Holguin and what were the top excursions and I came across one called Island Paradise, I’m not one for sightseeing so this sounded perfect sailing across to a beautiful island called Cayo Saetia on a catamaran, a stop for snorkelling and the chance to take part in a safari.

Cuba’s road aren’t the greatest, and after a long nearly 2 hour drive we arrived at the port to board our catamaran, she wasn’t a large catamaran and from my experience I would say quite small actually but I headed onboard and chose my spot on one of the nets at the front, ready to catch some rays on the 2 hour sail across to our first stop for snorkelling. Unfortunately for us it started to rain quite heavily just as we anchored to start snorkelling, I donned my gear anyway and headed out but because of the poor weather the visibility was not very good but this was just unlucky.

We then sailed a little further to our main stop, Cayo Saetia. Nobody lives on the island, except for the variety of wild animals. The island has 1 small hotel with around 9 rooms and used to be where the Cuban government would holiday but this is no longer the case and the hotel is open for guests.

The beach here is pristine white and the sea totally clear, very beautiful, there are tropical fish swimming around your feet and crabs burying themselves in and out of the sand along with iguanas basking in the sunshine!

We had lunch in the spectacular wooden restaurant on stilts overlooking the beach and dined on exotic meats, buffalo and antelope, I preferred the antelope the buffalo was a little tough!

We then had the choice to either spend a couple of hours on the beach or take part in the jeep safari which was 9 convertible Cuban pesos, which is around £6 sterling. The weather was much better the rain had stopped but we decided we may as well go, why not? We boarded an old Russian style jeep with another couple form Canada and headed off with our driver, we saw plenty of Antelope, a Giraffe which I got to feed, then onto the craziest part of the day , our driver spotted an ostrich which is in the wild don’t forget, he then runs over and slowly approaches the ostrich and then to our astonishment starts to stroke the ostrich’s neck to which he then sits down and our driver pops one leg over as if he is sitting on the ostrich! We all ran over to take photos and can’t believe what our driver is doing! He then calls me over and tells me to stroke his neck, and then to pop my leg over and sit on the Ostrich too after a slight hesitation I thought what the hell and did it! Crazy! So I can officially say i have sat on the back of an Ostrich!

We then jumped back into the jeep and saw zebras who were beautiful and buffalo’s.

The driver dropped us back to the beach where we went for a swim before heading back onboard the catamaran to take us back to our coach.

The safari was by far the best part of our day and well work the £6 per person! Although I had around 15 new bites which i think were potentially form the Ostrich as the feathers were very dirty as you can imagine in the wild! I would definitely recommend to take lots of insect repellent!

What has your favourite excursion been? Whether on a cruise or land holiday?