Pulling into Playa Larga, the road was sparsely lined with flags and teenagers in uniform. There was also more than the usual level of road-side propaganda. Banners preaching “Victoria” and paintings of tanks on walls. I was in a taxi with a Scottish guy who introduced himself as “Diego” to the locals; we’d met a few days before in Havana where we were part of a much larger group who hung out there and in Viñales.
We found ourselves a Casa Particulare (simple guest-house with typically just the one room for guests, such is the way of communism that independent businesses are limited to how many customers they can take) as tourists do when first arriving in any Cuban village or city, and at first glimpse our room already had more crabs than we could count. If you aren’t familiar with Spanish, “playa” does mean “beach” after all, though we weren’t exactly on the water’s edge.
While making use of the en suite, I heard a crack from the floor of the shower next to me. A crab. Flailing around with its legs in the air before managing to right-itself and hide behind the curtain. Probably fallen from the unglazed window above me- ah yup, here comes another one.
Deciding I’d rather be outdoors, that’s where I went. Just up the road was a tourist information office, perhaps I could find information about the Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) further along the coast. Knowing about the invasion (hence why I was there), I was totally surprised when the clerk told me that today was the anniversary of that invasion and that El Presidente was on his way to visit that afternoon. I ran back to tell Diego and a few hours later we were waiting at a bus stop, for about an hour before we gave up and caught a free ride on the back of a pick-up.
At the scene, there was a Soviet-era fairground, food stalls, and chairs laid out in front of a stage. We sat in the heat as the speeches came and went. It felt like being at a Trump rally. Emphatic poetry from middle-aged patriotic women, and rolling footage of battles and Fidel in his prime. Audience-participated chants of “Gloria!” “Viva!” “Victoria!” “Fidel!”, in between synchronized rhythmical clapping (think football chants). At the end, Raul Castro, famously shy, stepped out from hiding, shook a few hands of the front row before climbing aboard his bus and taking off back to Havana, followed by a couple-dozen-bus convoy of dignitaries.
I wanted to hang around and take photos while Diego was wanting to get back, so we said “see ya later” only to bump into each other 40 minutes later, Diego claiming he couldn’t find a ride back. The only way back was closed because of crabs on the road. “What?”
Of all the scams I’ve experienced around the world, this was the most bizarre. I was perplexed wondering where this story was going to take us.
After a while of flagging down cars, the sun was set by the time we managed to find a lift. Well, I don’t see the problem…
After a couple of kilometres, we could see the odd crab on the road. Big deal. just run them over if they don’t move. I’m still not seeing why people tried to tell us the road was closed.
Well, before we knew it, the whole road, grass verges, beach on the left and woodland on the right was just a sea of red; we literally couldn’t see a square-inch of tarmac. I didn’t even know there were this many crabs in the entire world. I have the confidence to find the words to enable you, dear reader, to comprehend just how numerous the crabs were, but I just don’t think you’d believe me; I struggled myself at the time to believe what I was seeing. For several kilometres, we drove over a layer of crab paste. The air smelt like the depths of a fish-market, and when I say “drove”, it was more like a controlled slide, much like trying to speed through a muddy field with road-tyres, with each crunch overlapping the last to produce a constant rustle.
There was no doubt in my mind that right now, we were committing crab genocide. I had so many questions. Does this happen every night? The road was clean on the way down, so does that mean it gets manually cleaned every morning? How does such a big population endure such high rates of vehicular manslaughter?
After, as I said, a few kilometres, the carpet of red faded back to black and we were back at the casa in Playa Larga, where, after a crocodile burger (from the local crocodile farm?), I slept in a fetal position at one corner of my bed, clutching onto every corner of my blanket to make sure no critters could get in.
The next morning I retraced the route by bus. Now if you saw the road as it was then, you’d say “wow, that’s a ridiculous amount of crabs, the road’s literally covered in them”, to which I’d respond “don’t say ‘literally’ when you mean ‘figuratively’; this is nothing compared to how many there were last night!”
Now that it was daytime I could clearly see where walls and tunnels had been built in an attempt to usher the crabs safely under the tarmac, but I think the tunnels were too much bottleneck for the swarm; they still came over the walls like a miniaturised scene from Starship Troopers. At least twice we drove past tourists with a hire car having to deal with a puncture, I’m guessing from the crab shells, lying next to the car trying to raise the jack while simultaneously continually flicking crabs off themselves.
In the road ahead of us, crabs stopped to snack on their dead cousins, before raising their claws to “En Garde!” the approaching bus, and then starting to strafe left and right in front of us, as if unsure which way to escape our path. Eventually, as we got closer, they’d stop still, and be looking so high up at us that they’d comically fall over onto their backs before we passed over them.
And that was that. I concluded that we’d coincidentally arrived on the night of a huge annual crab migration which just so happened to be on the night of the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Insert some metaphor about gory death and survival and defiance here.
Brilliant!