By EMMA BROWN and JACOB FENSTON
Published: Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, October 2, 2009 at 1:00 p.m.
Washington Post
We were coated in a slick of sweat, diesel exhaust and sunscreen when we
coasted up to a man wearing just-shined shoes and drinking rum from a
plastic cup. He squinted at our crinkled map, nodded, told us we wanted
to go south to the beach at San Luis and walked off as we tried to
explain that we were headed north.
Next we tried an older woman, who donned her huge reading glasses to
examine the map. She held it upside down and agreed that San Luis was
probably where we were headed. Her nephew chimed in: Nothing up that
other road but mountains and rivers. "Do what you want," he said,
exasperated. "But you won't get there before dark."
It was Day 3 of our self-guided biking tour of Cuba. We were lost, and
everyone -- including a baseball team playing by the side of the road --
was trying to help.
We had arrived in Cuba on a late-night flight from San Jose, Costa Rica,
staying that first night in the home of a friendly, fast-talking couple
who rented us a room in their bright blue Havana apartment and kindly
stored our bicycle boxes until our return seven days later. Pedaling
west out of the city, along its famed seaside promenade, we had passed
apartment buildings hung with laundry, crumbling grand hotels and
nationalist slogans ("¡Viva Castro! ¡Patria o muerte!") scrawled on
pieces of wood and nailed to telephone poles.
Now we were somewhere in Pinar del Rio province, the country's tobacco
capital. We'd taken a wrong turn and were trying to find a shortcut back
to our route, where our guidebook said we'd find a small guesthouse that
had a tendency to fill up fast.
We didn't have reservations or a phone number, but we crossed our
fingers, turning down a dirt road that didn't appear on the map. The
sky, which had been darkening all day, cracked open, unleashing bolts of
lightning and sheets of rain. We hunched our shoulders, pedaled faster
and -- what else could do we do? -- laughed.
Traveling on two wheels in Cuba, we were discovering, means being
exposed to the weather. But it also means being exposed to the country
-- its hidden valleys, its roadside fried-chicken vendors, its
tucked-away-in-a-courtyard music -- in a way we might not otherwise be.
Soaked and shivering late that rainy afternoon, we finally rolled up to
Finca la Guabina, a horse ranch that doubles as an eco-hotel. A young
woman who seemed to operate the place by herself offered us a luckily
vacant room in the high-ceilinged converted farmhouse, where a flier
beside the bed boasted such attractions as horseback riding,
cockfighting and crocodile-breeding.
We opted instead for hot showers and cold mojitos and fell into bed,
exhausted, listening to the occasional shriek of a peacock that made its
night home on a trellis outside our window.
Cubans we met were curious about these two Americans on bikes, and they
had lots of friendly questions about baseball, Barack Obama, the
economic crisis and hip-hop. With a license from the Treasury
Department, it's possible to travel to the island legally for
journalism, academic research or professional meetings. Otherwise, going
to Cuba requires patience with the layers of inconvenience that come
with skirting the embargo. We saw no other Americans during our
week-long trip.
We traveled for a full day, flying from Washington to Houston to Costa
Rica -- where we spent a seven-hour layover -- and finally to Havana.
Bringing bikes in cardboard boxes made the journey even more of a
hassle. But we thought it would be worth it: Touring the island by bike
would give us a measure of independence. And it would give us a sort of
behind-the-scenes look at this country, where cars are a rare luxury and
workers commute by foot, horse-drawn wagon, bus, bici-taxi or bike.
The next morning, our lonely-seeming hotelier served us a hefty plate of
fresh mango and pineapple for breakfast. We pedaled away from the ranch
in the slanting light of sunrise, flanked by galloping horses.
A long day lay ahead: Our circuitous, took-a-wrong-turn route meant that
we had covered a mere 12 miles the day before. That left us with nearly
100 miles to our next destination, Maria la Gorda, a white-sand beach at
the island's western tip.
We rolled through valleys past mountainous rock formations called
mogotes, and through tiny towns in the hills where we snacked on 8-cent
strawberry ice cream.
In a tiny, cramped store selling an assortment of imported goods --
shampoo, juice, one bicycle tire -- we waited to buy bottled water in a
slow-moving line that snaked toward a counter manned by a sole cashier.
The line was full of women who seemed at first not to notice the sweaty,
spandex-clad foreigners impatient to get back on the road. But then an
older woman with kind eyes turned toward us.
"It's boring for us, too," she said. A younger woman near the front of
the line took pity on us and pushed us up to the counter ahead of her,
where we scored our cold water.
Cuba is a cyclist's paradise: Many roads are empty, and even on the
busiest highways, drivers are used to sharing with bikes, pedestrians,
horses, mules and anything else that can roll or walk.
After lunch it felt more like a cyclist's hell: hot, flat and unending,
with not a spot of shade for miles.
The monotony of the parched western end of the island was finally broken
when we entered Guanahacabibes National Park, a UNESCO biosphere reserve
where a dense, humid forest surrounds the narrow road. Land crabs
scuttled in leaves at the pavement's edge, and we dodged thousands that
had bravely ventured out onto asphalt -- shrieking, we admit, when they
raised their little claws as if to grab our tires, wrangle us to the
ground and pluck out our eyeballs.
The forest broke suddenly into beach, and we caught our first glimpse of
the Caribbean Sea, as gloriously blue as postcards promise. We rode
another hour, tracing the coast until the road ended at a sleepy,
palm-studded resort. Inside the thatch-roofed lobby, a clerk greeted us
in perfect British English, gave us our room key and told us that the
all-you-can-eat buffet was already open for dinner.
There's something undeniably lovely about sleeping late and lounging in
the sand and giving saddle sores a chance to heal; we had been looking
forward to it for days.
After a day of sun, sea and sand, we headed back toward Havana. We
didn't have time to ride, so we bungeed our bikes to the roof of a taxi.
As we sped past homesteads carved out of the tropical forest, with pigs
and goats tied in front, we asked the driver whether Cubans resent
Americans for the hardships caused by the 49-year-old embargo.
"No, no, not at all," he answered. "It's a thing between two governments
-- it's not the people's fault." In fact, he said, Cubans want more
Americans to visit.
"Why?"
"Because they bring a lot of money."
Pair of Americans see Cuba from saddles | HeraldTribune.com | Sarasota
Florida | Southwest Florida's Information Leader (4 October 2009)
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20091004/article/910041011
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