Bay of Pigs and Playa Giron

Site Of The April 1961 Invasion Defeated In Seventy Two Hours, With A Battlefield Museum; Also One Of The Best Shore Diving Coasts In The Caribbean · Playa Giron, Matanzas

In April 1961 a CIA-trained brigade of Cuban exiles landed on this coast and was defeated in seventy-two hours, an episode that hardened everything that followed - the Soviet alliance, the missile crisis, sixty years of embargo. The Museo Giron at Playa Giron tells the Cuban version with a Sea Fury fighter and a tank outside, and along the road a line of small concrete markers names each defender killed where he fell. It is a partial account and reading it as one is part of the visit. The other half of this coast has nothing to do with any of that: the Caribbean shelf drops away within metres of the shore here, so you walk off a rocky ledge into a wall in clear water, and Punta Perdiz, Caleta Buena and the flooded cenote at Cueva de los Peces make it some of the best and cheapest shore diving in the Caribbean. Most visitors arrive for one of those two things and leave having done both, which is the peninsula's particular trick.

Museo Giron, Playa Giron, Cienaga de Zapata, Matanzas, Playa Giron, Matanzas, Cuba

The Museo Giron keeps daytime hours with a weekly closing day. The beaches, the Cueva de los Peces cenote and the dive entries at Punta Perdiz and Caleta Buena are open through the day, with small charges at the managed ones. Diving is arranged through the dive centres and depends on fuel and compressor power, which the blackouts affect.

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