Shortly after 8:00, I went to the marina office and paid our bill then to Guardia de Frontera to get our cruising permit. The marina manager had already told them I was coming so everything was prepared. We are now free to cruise the waters of Cuba, needing to check in again only when we enter another port (which for us will be Trinidad in about a week.) Our first anchorage in Cuba was actually just a short hop from the marina by one of the beautiful sandy beaches for which Cayo Largo is famous. While we were motoring out there, I ran the watermaker as we hadn't in a few days and were getting low. Once anchored, I let the engine run for another hour making water. While we were doing that, I made up 10 baggies each with ~200' of monofilament fishing line and a dozen or so hooks to give to fishermen we might meet in our travels. Deb & Sandy made up similar gift bags for women and children - mostly soaps, lotions, etc. After lunch, we took the dink ashore. The first thing that struck me is how CLEAN the beach was. No one cleans it, there were rows of seaweed at tide levels, but NO PLASTIC! I think this is the first Caribbean beach I have visited that was not littered with plastic water bottle, etc. Amazing. This is the 'other' Cuba - not the history, the architecture, the music, the politics, or even the people. This is unspoiled Caribbean. The beach was the whitest I have seen - powder soft; the water, crystal clear. After walking quite a bit of it, we sat in chest deep water and had a beer as the waves pushed us around. Life doesn't get much better than this. Unless you go around to the other side of the point. (We had to go around as the middle of this point is a rookery for terns as we found out when we attempted to cross over. Dozens of birds took to the air squawking and I was dive bombed by a couple. We went around the shore.) The other side was a lagoon, no waves, but still the same powder white sand and clear water AND conch. Dozens of them in 12" of water. All nice and big and mature just waiting to be picked up. We decided not to be greedy and took only the largest 6 we found. Back at the boat, I demonstrated to Sandy how easy it is to remove the conch from its shell when you do it right. And how hard it is when you do it wrong! Then Deb showed her how to clean them. As they were throwing conch guts overboard, a group of fish gathered including a large snapper. I quickly rigged my light weight spinning rod, tied on a hook, and baited it with a piece of conch guts. No sooner had it hit the water than the big snapper took it. I had the drag set fairly light, but nonetheless, that snapper soon had my rod bent in a 'U' stripping off line. I fought him for quite a while. It was fun catching a good sized fish on such a light weight setup. I finally netted him (he was bigger than the net but too tired to escape), killed him and then did the 'filet and release' trick. Will tried for a second fish, but there were only little ones that, thankfully, did not bite. I put the fish in the freezer as we still had left-overs from the fish I bought. That made great fish tacos for dinner! But first we had very fresh conch salad and mojitos! After dinner I had my first Cuban cigar and rum in the net looking at the amazing array of stars. This will happen again. And again! It's a little bit hard delaying the trip to Havana and Santiago and seeing all the sights, hearing the sounds, etc. but this, too, is unique ad we look forward to the next week or so of cruising the south shore of Cuba, visiting deserted islands, walking beaches and snorkeling (or hookahing!) unspoiled reefs, hopefully meeting some local fishermen. This is a very special part of Cuba as well.