Road Trip in Cuba

Road Trip from Vita through Banes and Baracoa, en route to Santiago de Cuba.

Road Trip Day! In the morning we went to pick up our fruits and veggies from Carlos and Rita and were surprised by the gi-normous amount of eggs and mangoes that Pepe has brought. He apparently went some 20 miles to Holguin that morning and somehow transported over 30 lbs of mangoes, pineapples, limes, cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, etc. We were staggered to say the least, and THEN we went in to Carlos' house and saw what HE had got for us... It was like Mama Cornucopias' bucket had exploded.

We smuggled the stuff into the marina in our newly rented car, and divided up the spoils between the 3 Canadian boats, nationality being stronger than regulations, and then got ready to leave on our road trip.

We left 11 AM with car packed with five people, bag of mangoes, cold beer, and just acquired Cuban pesos. Our route took us to Guardalavaca, then Banes, through Moa and then to Barracoa at the easternmost tip of the North shore of Cuba. The scenery was spectacular, making us stop every 20 minutes to gape and take pictures. It was changing from tropical Thailand-like forest glades to rocky mountains to red, red earth like hills, to ugly chemical processing plants destroying every life around, to crashing waves over coal-pitted shores... It was an amazing drive, though it taxed the buns to sit for over 8 hours with 4 other people squeezed together in a small Peugeot 206.

Dave and Linda had many stories to tell and besides that, spoke excellent English (day off from translation) and Luke their son spent most of his conversational time discussing with Maciek the relative points to be awarded for hitting pedestrians in uniform, with babies, or on bikes. There was also an ongoing game of points awarded to the drivers, Dave and Maciek, based on how many pot holes they successfully avoided, the road for that first day at least being viciously pitted with holes that could swallow a good-sized donkey cart, and how many times they managed to stall the car. I think Maciek that day came out on top as he was the faster and more decisive driver, and though he hit more potholes, at least he got us to Barracoa before night. Just.

King Palms were the trees of the day, a dog/pig/goat sighting was the funniest - it was an animal at least, that's as far as we could positively determine; the nickel treatment plant in Moa was the weirdest (for reasons of Cuba's security and positive international propaganda, it was a "no taking pictures" zone and strictly monitored by a motorcycle driver who pulled up alongside us and emphatically waved his finger in the negative when we pulled out our cameras) and the mango puree factory in the back seat of the car was the messiest (I think we happily consumed about 10 mangoes each from the abundant stash).

Banes held for us the first taste of the typical Cuban town with its US dollar only store, (we lined up for a shot but didn't go in), some small and empty shops, a real old-school shoemaker in action and a crazed cow-skull-wearing Cuban who screamed at us in our car. We had some difficulty finding the road back out to Moa, turns out we shouldn't have gone into the town at all, but we found the highway after an hour and continued on.

Once in the outskirts of Baracoa, we must have looked the part of lost tourists because someone stopped beside us and he tried to explain to us that the hotel we were going for was not operating. Roberto, as he turned out to be, instructed us in excellent English to follow him into town to friends of his who had two rooms we could stay in. He biked off furiously and it was all we could do to keep up and hope that we were being led to a place to sleep and not to some dark corner to be robbed. Our suspicions were unfounded, Roberto turned out to be one of the only altogether kind and unselfish guides that we have met during our stay in Cuba.

Locating places to stay turned out to be a very confusing operation. We were led from Eugenio's place, where Maciek and I were to stay, to another house up the road, where the couple was to stay. He was about to lead us to a 3rd house for Luke because the rules for casas particulars (State instituted B&B) specify that no more than 2 people were allowed per room, but we objected on the grounds that Luke was their son and had to stay with his parents. After some discussion about his age, Eugenio made some phone calls and confirmed that it was allowed, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Roberto came back and led us to a restaurant, not something we particularly wanted but as it was past nine, there was no where else we could get something to eat. We invited Roberto in for a beer and he sat politely with us for about 1/2 an hour, talking mostly in French to me (he was a multi-linguist, being fluent in French and Spanish, knowing quite a bit of English, and pretty good German and Italian!) We went back to our houses and had a relatively restful night, though Maciek was woken up at 4 am by trucks and roosters and couldn't get back to sleep and was writing something furiously in his journal.

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