Before the holiday one question tormented me: would we manage to get into the abandoned nuclear power plant near Cienfuegos? According to reports on the internet, access was impossible, so I had already given up hope. Then, at the Wunderwelten photo fair in Friedrichshafen, someone gave a talk about Cuba and said he had got in twice in 2015 without any checks. Suddenly the tingle was back.
On the day of the book of condolence
That morning Cienfuegos was bustling: after Fidel’s death everyone could sign the official book of condolence, and the city was full of people and police. A good moment, we thought, to drive to the power plant – perhaps there would be fewer guards today. Construction was halted shortly before completion when the Soviet Union collapsed and the main financial backer fell away. Since then the reactor, the buildings around it and the town once planned for the workers have been decaying.
A gatekeeper shows the way
Once there, we negotiated for a long time in broken Spanish with a gatekeeper – and suddenly he showed us a way. We parked out of sight in the bushes and, thanks to offline navigation, found a footpath to the power plant. We couldn’t get to the reactor itself; a new security company had walled it in, and demolition work is probably going on there. But the buildings next to it and the cooling facilities were accessible – with our hearts pounding.
Green wood between peeling plaster – a morning in Cienfuegos.Rust, old wood, a house number – and right beside it the nose of a classic car.A blue truck with a chrome grille, two women walking past behind it.Two men among sacks in a storeroom, on the wall: Acceso limitado.A tall white wall, a horse-drawn cart at the end of the street.Colourful façades with balconies and a green classic car in front – Cienfuegos in colour.Like an America, it says on the blue dress – in the middle of a street in Cienfuegos.Two classic cars in front of the arches, a bread seller with his cart beside them.Passers-by in the morning light, the grille of a classic car gleaming in front.Curling wrought iron, rusted, in front of peeling plaster.Cap, sunglasses, arm out of the window: a bus driver takes a break.A red rose in a hand – after Fidel's death the city was full of people.The queue for the book of condolence, mopeds and a red car in front.White coats on the street: one woman is crying, another laughing.The crowd in front of the town hall with its red dome, the Cuban flag above.A flower, a Che T-shirt and a sign reading Comandante.A police officer at the barrier – that day they were everywhere.The queue at the town hall and a wall reading Gracias Fidel.An older woman in a blue top looks out through the balcony railing.Mourning under umbrellas, beside them a woman dressed all in white.Two older women in sunglasses sitting by the water.An ornate palace under palms and a blue house with a dome in Cienfuegos.Almost overgrown: a small white house between rubble and bushes near the power plant.Rubble and scrub beside an empty road – the grounds of the nuclear power plant.Empty concrete basins with bushes now growing in them.A low, crumbling building by the roadside in the scrub.Concrete slabs and rubble, behind them the forest reclaiming everything.Cows grazing on the track – otherwise there is no one here.A concrete remnant between trees on the footpath to the power plant.The access road to the unfinished reactor, its dome rising above the scrub.The reactor with its concrete dome, an open steel frame beside it.Stopped shortly before completion: the steel frame of an auxiliary building.Steel supports above a deep shaft in the unfinished building.Rusty steel with cut-out shapes beneath a green tank.Through an opening into the long hall full of steel girders.Empty concrete, pipes and rubble through the window – with a pounding heart.A dark corridor, a light at the very end.The ribbed concrete shell of the reactor – walled off now, we could not get close.A stencilled -2000 on the wall and metal parts in the rubble.A covered walkway between concrete pillars, plants growing in.Bent sheet metal and two pipe sockets in the rubble.With a backpack through the dark corridor to the next door.The reactor through an opening below the concrete ceiling.Small in front of the open steel skeleton: a man in a blue shirt.The steel skeleton from below and from the side – decaying since the end of the Soviet Union.A red arrow on grey concrete pointing nowhere.Cracks in the dry ground, two stones, a few blades of grass.A crumbling wall with handwritten text and a hole in the plaster.A narrow path through rubble and dense green.A field of rubble with concrete remains, the reactor dome behind.A water tower like a mushroom above scrub and building rubble.In the end just a silhouette: the reactor against the evening sky.
