Km 15756
We where cycling along the shore line with the sierra Maesta to our right and the turquoise Caribbean sea to our left, in one of the most remote areas of the island, Granma province. We stop in one cafeteria, a road side state owned restaurant, just to buy some water. It was mid-day and the hot sun didn't invite to cycle. Some locals invite us for a rum and then another. And when their bottle was finished, we pulled our "Guayabita del pinar" from the panniers and we never left...
Granma province doesn't see many tourists. The remote southeastern part of the island has the Sierra Maestra at its heart, where Fidel and his comrades had their headquarters in the beginning of the revolution and "liberation" of the island. This region seems to be a bit forgotten, like a local told me: "we started the liberation of the island from the Tirane Batista and now we been forgotten by the central government". Other local I met disagrees: "when a hurricane badly damaged this part of the island years ago, destroying 18.000 homes, the government gave us materials to built new houses by ourselves and new kitchen appliances to the ones that lost everything"..
In Cuba to found a "casa particular" (authorized home stay) or a local place to eat, usually is never a problem. But on this part of the island to found the most basic things for a touring cyclist could present some difficulties.
We stop at the small town of Niquero to buy provisions for that evenings dinner. It was 3pm and the Mercado agro-pecuario (the local food market where private land owners are allowed to sell their goods) didn't have almost anything on sale. We where also hoping to found some fish or lobster from a fisherman. We knew that consumption of lobster was forbidden to Cubans, but there was a black market in some parts of the country. Crustaceans are caught only for sale on the tourist resorts and for export. We bought some small onions full of dirt from a man that holds the plate of the scale on his hand and stares at me. Only after a short moment I remembered that in Cuba if you go shopping you have to take your own bag (a very ecological system!), without a bag at reach, I opened my hand bar bag and throw it inside. Further down the road we bought 4 carrots and a garlic head, and then, were taken inside a private house where some chopped beef shared the table with the flies.
Beef is another "illegal" product for Cubans. The government owns all the cattle farms. Small private farm owners can have cows, but supposedly only to work the fields, not for consumption. Our intention weren't to buy beef but some coffee.
A old lady sells us some portions of hand grounded coffee wrapped in newspaper and we move on. With the news of 2 foreigners looking for fish spreading fast, we were approached by a man that sold us 2 fresh fish for just 20 Cuban pesos (0.55 euros). We found out later that we been riped off on the price!
shopping done and we already knew half of town.
The plan of the day was to cycle to the village of Las Coloradas, where Fidel landed on board the famous ship Granma, check out the museum allusive to the event and camp on the local campground. Camping grounds in Cuba, unlike the rest of the world, are not places to pitch your tent. But holiday camps for Cubans and rarely used by foreigners, with family style cabins and several activities centered around a open air disco. They told us it was full (often the answer given when they don't accept foreigners), but we could pitch our tent outside of the campground (even if there was plenty of space inside!) next to the access road to the camp, that seemed where the local kids congregated and with the disco on the other side of the wall. Not quite the place we were looking for after a long days ride through the slopes of sierra Maestra, besides that we wanted to cook the fish on fire.
We met Leonel near the village and he kindly offered his simple house for us to stay.
In Cuba, a society supposedly of Equalities, there are two distinct economic groups that could be almost define, even if wrongly, by the monetary system of two currencies. The Cuban that have access to Convertible pesos;tose are the ones that work directly in the tourism industry or that receive income from relatives working in a foreign country. An the ones that don't have access to CUC. The monthly salary of 300 Cuban pesos (10 euros!) doesn't put much food on the table, even if the government heavily subsidise the basic goods, and offers free of charge an excellent service in health and education (amongst the best in all Latin America).
Leonel´s family belonged to the later group.He welcomed us in his simple hut where we cooked the fish wrapped in banana leafs and listened his version of life on the island...
The days that followed, between Mazanillo and Ciego Avila, were very monotonous. Kilometer upon Kilometer of sugar cane plantations, flat and hot. The monotony of the ride was sometimes broken by the sounds of the children from a garden on the side of the road or from the intimacy of a house, shouting:
-TU-RIS-TA!!
-TU-RIS-TA!!
or by the occasional:
-Psss!!-Pssssssss!!
of young girls on a bus stop trying to get our attention. that Cuban tradition apparently originally from the Iberian peninsula is called "Piropo". This "cat-call" would be considered rude or even sexual harassment in many Occidental countries, but here is just a way to call someones attention or simply as a complement to the opposite sex. The most common way is just a simple "Psssss", but there is more elaborated ways that sound more like a robin singing in a winters dawn.
Another entertainment in Cuban roads are Cuban themselves on old soviet bicycles, without gears, breaks and even sometimes without saddles. they would overtake me with certain regularity, with a proud face and incredulous look of a foreign on a overloaded bike with a reddish and sweat face from the effort of riding under a hot sun. Sometimes they would cycle besides me chatting happily for a while and then suddenly waved goodbye and disappeared inside a sugar cane field. Other times they would invite me to stop and have a refreshment at their houses (rum was offered sometimes times!) and some more conversation.
The bike touring holidays were over for Isaac that had to go to Mexico to met his girlfriend, and I continued alone to Trinidad. Trinidad is a UNESCO heritage town on the south side of the island and one of the most well preserved examples of colonial architecture in Cuba.
Two days latter I was on the road again...
A road that seemed to climb from the sea to the clouds in just a few kilometres. The 14 miles from Trinidad to Topes de Collantes, to my surprise, would be not only the hardest in Cuba, but of my entire journey since I left the Canadian Arctic 9 months ago. The grades, many times over 20%, were just cruel.
-The architect of this road was a donkey, said the owner of the house I stayed in Trinidad. He was having a laugh at me. There are cars that just can`t climb it, he continued.
-If it was a donkey, I replied, then my "burra" also can climb it. ("burra" is the nickname of my bicycle that means donkey).
I was cycling on the lowest gear possible already for a while, and my legs were on a obfuscated activity of despair pumping the pedals up and down like pistons, but the bicycle hardly moved. I was using all the possible energy I had, but even so the "burra" climbed at a snails pace.
The beat of my heart, I felt it on my head.
Standing, using all my energy in one leg, I pushed one pedal each time, my muscles cried for forgiveness. But I was determined not to loss the fight with a mountain just 700 metres high. If I dismounted here, how could I climb the Andes with its passes above 4000 and 5000 when I arrive in south America?
With my arrival in Topes de Collantes, after that cruel climb, a group of local "hombres" noticed my efforts to stay on my bike and started to clap their hands and shouting comments of encouragement. I felt like Armstrong crossing the final line. Someone should have put a rope over the road for me to cross with tears in my eyes and my harms in the air in triumph. But I probably would have fallen over. Instead I thanked my supporters with a embarrassing smile and cycle the last few hundred yards to receive my trophy: A litre of coconut flavoured soy milk yogurt that I bought in a local shop for 3 Cuban pesos.
Several days later I was cycling on the Cuban equivalent to the Lisbon-Oporto freeway, "La Autopista" that connects Havana with Pinar del Rio. Sometimes all I could hear, was the noise of the chain asking for more oil, or the crack of the leaves as I cycled through, or the singing of some birds sitting on the telephone wires, like if they where updating their gossip. On this nearly empty 2 lane highway that seemed to have more people then cars and where the dogs slept the siesta on the hot asphalt, occasionally, some museum relic that wouldn't have passed the road inspection 20 years ago, overtakes me at high speed, leaving beyond a cloud of black smoke that left me wounder if those piles of rusty steel worked on petrol or on Cuban cigars.
Sometimes I just imagined the moment that those cars would dismantle piece by piece on the empty asphalt, but no! The majority of cars that dot the Cuban roads are American classics from the 50` , noisy and rusty pieces of art that have been kept on the roads thanks to the fantastic mechanics abilities of its owners.
A few hours after I left the Autopista and continued my journey East.There was a new perfume in the air as I approach the areas of tobacco fields. Every now and then I would cross a plantation of fresh green leafs and its perfume would fill the air as I passed through. I climbed a hill to its top and stop to enjoy the valley ahead of me. The sun set beyond the "mogotes" (limestone formations) that erupted from the green and red land like pre-historic monsters. A car intersected the landscape leaving a poetic smoke beyond. I looked at the road that I just climbed and smiled.Those where the last efforts of my 1600 km of cycling in Cuba. From there was a soft downhill to the village of Vinales.
With my flight back to Mexico in just two days, and unable to change my ticket, I took a bus back to the pastel color city with a decadent splendour that is Havana. Again on board of the Russian Tupolev when the feet of the passengers where submerged by the "smoke" from the ventilation, a tourist next to me seemed worried.
- Its the air conditioned, I said, trying to relax him. I asked for a Cuba libre(rum and coke) and looking through the window I toasted with the island that was slowly been swollen by the lapis azure sea.
If I had to describe Cuba in one single word, it would have to be RHYTHM.
Rhythm you either have it or not! Cuba has it by the loads. A perpetual Latin pulse influenced by African roots that is transmittedby every single citizen like if it was something genetic. Everything they do, it doesn't matter how mundane it is, it looks like a succession of carefully choreographed steeps that leave the visitor hypnotised....
Nuno Brilhante Pedrosa
In cancun, México.
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