Jardines de la Reina - Feb 2018
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:59 am
Since GDog asked...
While a lot of the ThThTh crew was in Anilao, I was taking a photo workshop trip with Richard Salas to Jardines de la Reina. OFAC-compliant travel is still allowed to Cuba. This trip is an educational person-to-person exchange.
We had a couple days in Havana to start the trip and did tour of the city in classic cars.
Havana gallery
To get to the Gardens, it's a 6-ish hour drive to Júcaro followed by another 2 hours on boat. While there are some normal liveaboard boats, we stayed on an anchored houseboat, the Tortuga. Smaller boats would then take us out to the dive sites. 15 minute rides or so each way. Usually went back to the Tortuga between dives.
The Gardens is an archipelago with tons of mangroves. It is a protected area, and Cuba more generally doesn't allow international fishing in their waters. So lots of reef sharks and silky sharks and groupers. Oddly, I did not see many big parrotfish despite the lack of fishing, although I spotted a blue parrot on the very last day. Fewer stony corals than you'd expect, but lots of sea fans, sea rods, and other octocorals. 30 feet and up, you'd see huge fields of the golden-colored long spine sea fans. Also a good deal of pillar coral.
Was shooting fisheye for much of the trip, so wasn't looking for the smaller stuff. Saw a few green moray eels, a Hawksbill turtle, some barracuda, a couple schools of tarpon, quite a few Nassau grouper, a goliath grouper, tiger and black groupers, gray angelfish (oddly no French), lot of soapfish, some cero (mackerel), queen triggerfish, and the normal Caribbean complement of parrotfish, hogfish, wrasses, snappers, squirrelfish, and black durgon. Spent a lot of time taking pictures of the giant barrel sponges actually.
And then there are the crocodiles. We saw two on the trip, and they hang around enough to come when called by name. Tito would hang out by the houseboat. Niño was further out in the mangroves. You can snorkel with either of them. But don't get too close along their flanks because they can whip their heads side-to-side. If they felt too boxed in by people, they'd just swim away.
There's also an island filled with friendly hutia (big rodents) and iguana that they took us out to one day between dives.
If you find Caribbean diving kind of boring, you might end up bored on some of the less sharky dives. But I also found it a good time to just try some different things photography-wise. Plus there's plenty of unique stuff to make the whole experience more than worthwhile.
Food was very good (lobster nearly every night, no I don't know where they sourced it from). Rooms were plenty comfortable for 2. 3 seemed to be a crowd.
Full diving gallery
While a lot of the ThThTh crew was in Anilao, I was taking a photo workshop trip with Richard Salas to Jardines de la Reina. OFAC-compliant travel is still allowed to Cuba. This trip is an educational person-to-person exchange.
We had a couple days in Havana to start the trip and did tour of the city in classic cars.
Havana gallery
To get to the Gardens, it's a 6-ish hour drive to Júcaro followed by another 2 hours on boat. While there are some normal liveaboard boats, we stayed on an anchored houseboat, the Tortuga. Smaller boats would then take us out to the dive sites. 15 minute rides or so each way. Usually went back to the Tortuga between dives.
The Gardens is an archipelago with tons of mangroves. It is a protected area, and Cuba more generally doesn't allow international fishing in their waters. So lots of reef sharks and silky sharks and groupers. Oddly, I did not see many big parrotfish despite the lack of fishing, although I spotted a blue parrot on the very last day. Fewer stony corals than you'd expect, but lots of sea fans, sea rods, and other octocorals. 30 feet and up, you'd see huge fields of the golden-colored long spine sea fans. Also a good deal of pillar coral.
Was shooting fisheye for much of the trip, so wasn't looking for the smaller stuff. Saw a few green moray eels, a Hawksbill turtle, some barracuda, a couple schools of tarpon, quite a few Nassau grouper, a goliath grouper, tiger and black groupers, gray angelfish (oddly no French), lot of soapfish, some cero (mackerel), queen triggerfish, and the normal Caribbean complement of parrotfish, hogfish, wrasses, snappers, squirrelfish, and black durgon. Spent a lot of time taking pictures of the giant barrel sponges actually.
And then there are the crocodiles. We saw two on the trip, and they hang around enough to come when called by name. Tito would hang out by the houseboat. Niño was further out in the mangroves. You can snorkel with either of them. But don't get too close along their flanks because they can whip their heads side-to-side. If they felt too boxed in by people, they'd just swim away.
There's also an island filled with friendly hutia (big rodents) and iguana that they took us out to one day between dives.
If you find Caribbean diving kind of boring, you might end up bored on some of the less sharky dives. But I also found it a good time to just try some different things photography-wise. Plus there's plenty of unique stuff to make the whole experience more than worthwhile.
Food was very good (lobster nearly every night, no I don't know where they sourced it from). Rooms were plenty comfortable for 2. 3 seemed to be a crowd.
Full diving gallery
