Nueva Gerona

Home for Bacallao is the city of Nueva Gerona, the capital of Cuba’s second largest island, Isla de la Juventud, about 90 miles south of Havana.

The word on the street in Nueva Gerona was that the military was conducting antidrug sweeps along the coast.

“As fearful as we are of thousands of Americans going down to Cuba and recreating the mass tourism model that destroyed much of the Caribbean,” he told me in Nueva Gerona, “tourism has to be part of the solution.”

There are no streetlights in Nueva Gerona, no buildings taller than two stories, and almost the only traffic is horse-and-buggy.

Far more satisfying is to stay in one of the casas particulares, private guesthouses, in the town of Nueva Gerona and make day trips.