Car hire in Cuba costs $150 day and the agents warn you to take off logo badges and windscreen wiper rubbers when you park at night as they provide a staple source of recycling/income for locals! So it was with great anticipation that we woke at 7am and checked our ride before setting off for Trinidad. All items were in place so we opened the map and confidently set off on our next adventure – as there is only one road to follow south how hard could it be?
That was our first mistake – getting out of Havana is not as easy as it looks on the map! The night before Sue had clearly and carefully explained how to get to the tunnel for the H1. We missed it totally but soon found ourselves on the H1 coming from the opposite direction. Ha! All we then had to do was find a place to U-turn … which we managed eventually … and finally, after nearly an hour of faffing about in peak hour Havana traffic, we were finally on our way!
On the highway we saw spot fires (were these deliberate burn offs or caused by discarded cigarettes?), pelotons of lycra clad cyclists (where did they come from and where were they going?), the obligatory traffic jam of horses and carts and people walking or begging for a ride. We also saw charcoal makers and humble wooden houses with palm frond roofs. After about two hours driving we reached the turn off to the ‘Australia’ sugar mill.
This mill had been run by CSR prior to the revolution. It was nationalised as part of Fidel’s ‘agrarian reform law’ and later was converted into Fidel’s battle headquarters during the ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion. On the way down to the Giron we saw cars filled with tourists and diving gear as the diving here in the Caribbean is spectacular. Oh and every so often there was a guy on a lookout tower dressed in full military uniform nursing a machine gun. Eventually we got to the Museum of the Playa Giron and there learned all about the read about the failed invasion plans od the ‘Yankees and their imperial flunkies’.
We also learned that, prior to the Revolution, the people of this area (the Zapata swamp) eked out a megre living as charcoal burners. They were all very poor and sickly and most were also completely illiterate. This all changed after the Revolution. Revolutionaries came to the area and set up camp and improved their living conditions. (Although I have to say that the people, their animals, their fields and their houses still looked in very poor condition to us.)
Worth noting for the record: I saw a photograph in the museum of a protest in the USA in which people were holding placards that read “Hands off Cuba” and the deliberations that had haunted me for many years as I walked to and from high school each day for nearly a year in 1973 came flooding back. I used to ponder the meaning of the graffiti on the rail bridge near Corinda station.
It read ‘Hands off HeCuba” and no matter how many different ways I pronounced it, it never made any sense.
Well, thanks to my trip to Cuba, I can now rest easy as that mystery has been revealed, albeit 40 years later!! It is now quite obvious that CIA operatives lived in the Corinda area and defaced the communist’s protests before their ideology could proliferate amongst the schoolchildren in the western suburbs of Brisbane.
We drove on to the mouth of the Bay of Pigs at Cienfuegos and from there headed East to Trinidad. At about 2pm we stopped for lunch at a little road side shack overlooking the ocean. We ordered a lobster and shrimp salad. We congratulated the young proprietor on his apparently thriving and very well presented little business but he told us (sadly) ‘Oh no, it’s not mine, I am like everyone else in Cuba I work for Raul Castro’.
Apparently the government owns everything in this country – as a consequence our young friend clearly held little enthusiasm for his future. Eventually we drove into Trinidad. Our first impression was, that compared to the citizens of Havana, the people here are not particularly tall and there is a huge variation/mix of colour and features, probably passed down from the mixture of the original Spanish masters and their African slaves as this was a major port for the importation of slaves destined for the sugar farms.
Generally the men were thin (particularly the ones wearing cowboy hats) and surprisingly the women a little over weight. Many women wore no makeup and made no attempt to hold in their big bellies. (As you can imagine, I loved it here!). As a striking contrast the young men everywhere in Cuba were well groomed and wore the latest fashions with regards to their hair and clothing. But the girls were mostly very plain and rarely did we see one who wasn’t simply dressed (unless she was black).
We took some time to find ‘Hostal El Chef’ as the maps we had been given were quality poor photocopies and had no scale. After once or twice around the town we found what we were looking for and were warmly greeted by Emilio and Fatima. Hostal El Chef is a ‘casa particular’ or B&B style home stay. As tourism increased in Cuba, leaving the few real hotels always full, the people were given more freedom to pursue commercial arrangements and so the family home could be a source of income and owners would open their doors to lodgers on a similar basis to Greek Pensions.
As the ride had been a dry and dusty one, we were keen for a swim in the Caribbean at a beach resort on the Ancon Peninsula – this is where all of the big tourist hotels are hidden away from the locals. Upon our return we met Reno (an Italian who has been coming to Cuba for many years) and who was managing a band of ‘troubadours’.
As we enjoyed our dinner on the hostel’s rooftop (bean soup, fresh lobster, potatoes and saffron rice and ice cream) he arranged for us to be serenaded and the three (not so talented) tenors also managed to sing me Happy Birthday (in English and Spanish)!
Later that night we walked up the hill to the ‘old town’ for a Havana Club 7 rum and some salsa music. Along the way we found a Catholic Church that was conducting a mass – this was an unusual sight as religion had been discouraged in the Revolution. We tried to get some sleep but the music played until 3am.
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