Hitchhiking in Cuba

6th March 2013

You buy the beer, and we’ll slaughter an animal from the farm for dinner.  But there’s a country-wide ban on alcohol, el luto, since Chavez died yesterday. My hosts are socialists, some are communist revolutionaries even, but even they won’t forgo beer on this occasion. Julia, my girlfriend I guess (since I am her “novio”), knows the attendant at the petrol station so we smuggle a crate of beer out hidden under a towel.

 

It’s been another long day driving, swerving around potholes, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages, and now I’ve met the family, dozens of them, all lovely people. Cuba is surreal enough as it is, but being drawn into this family community in a small town I feel like I’ve entered a lucid dream. I have some control over my movements but my body doesn’t know what to do with all the new stimuli.

 

Back home it’s do you want pig or lamb? I’m wondering why I didn’t say I’m vegetarian (even though I’m not, yet), I feel bad enough triggering the death of a large animal let alone having to choose which - what next will they hand me a knife to do the honours? And why don’t I feel so bad if the animal is already dead, chopped up and wrapped in supermarket cling film? I mean the latent demand triggers the death anyway.  I wonder if slaughter should be hot-blooded only, and if hunting is a hot-blooded activity.

They help me out by expanding that the lamb will take longer to cook, and since it’s already dark and no doubt the animals are still running about somewhere in the farm this could be a long evening. So I opt for pig. A horse and cart pulls up, ridden by an uncle and two kids. A medium sized pig sleeps lazily on the back like a contented dog. Ignorance truly is bliss. I’m thinking, you have got to be joking, why is it still alive I mean it’s not like you can just pop it in a microwave and it’ll be done in 10 minutes. It’s late and I’m ready to crash out. They ask me to empty my car boot for the pig; it's been an unusual day and even on a good day I'm gullible, so for a moment they had me. No the pig goes on with the horse, and I pile in several family members into the car and off we head to the finca, a small farm where one of her uncles lives.

 

I would like to use names here, but everyone is called Gonzalo or Arturo so it would be confusing, and I never understood who was who anyway. Only Alberto, Julia’s grandfather who was 78 and I really liked I could distinguish easily.

At the farm things don’t seem to be proceeding very quickly - a small fire is lit, the pig snores away, and the women peel some yuka. Uncle Gonzalo makes a suggestion which I’m very happy to accept – that we eat turkey instead and the pig lives. Next time give us more notice and we’ll roast a pig.

 

Someone appears with a flapping turkey, some feathers fly and it’s all over, within minutes it’s de-feathered.  Dogs loiter with intent. Only time now left to kill, so the hammock goes up and I lie back trying to work out if this is in fact a lucid dream or not.

Only days earlier I had picked up Julia as a hitchhiker during an unusual period of heavy rain. I thought nothing of it at first since I’d been picking up around 15 hitchhikers a day (there’s a shortage of public transport and always people waiting for rides) She was petit and quiet, with a pretty floral dress and no baggage, at least none physical (though familial I’m sure). We spoke only a little – she was as quiet as me - but enough to judge safety of character, and somewhere along the ride I invited her to come with me to Bayamo, my next destination. I wasn’t really sure if she had accepted but that she didn’t ask me to stop the car suggested she was in.

We found a lovely casa particular and moved in as naturally as if we’d been together for, well, more than an hour anyway. She had no luggage but I had plenty so it didn’t look too odd, and anyway the family of the house were lovely. I let Julia shower while I rested a moment, though I considered jumping straight in with her; that shapely dress was definitely alluring. Then I showered too and suddenly we were both resting in our cama matrimonial. But not resting for long. She was truly a delight, tender and sweet in her touch, and we fitted perfectly like two pieces of a jigsaw. A long time since I felt that good in bed with a girl.  She was open to me in a way I found so sexy, open without pulling, just being there and giving herself to me without trying to dominate, but responding with passion. Purely alluring.

After such an afternoon it didn’t matter that the evening was a flop - an overpriced dinner followed by a tacky disco. After the heavy rain that day I never found out if the famed street party of Bayamo ever happened. The following day my plans started to collapse further as there were no cash machines in town and it was a Sunday, so attempting to reach Comandancia de La Plata just 60km away suddenly became an impossibility as the entry fees exceeded my funds, and Julia had no clothes except the pretty dress she wore when I picked her up.

I’ve no proof that she didn’t do this hitchhike thing for a “living”, but my intuition told me not. A number of clues seemed to back this too, like her membership of the youth communist organisation, a desire to do military service, and her lack of demand for anything. Maybe just a very smart cover, but if so I live in ignorant bliss.

Shopping in Cuba was worth every penny in the experience. Clothes are actually quite cheap e.g, leggings 2 pounds (not for me I should add), jeans  10 pounds, and credit cards were accepted. It felt good buying her stuff, it cost me very little and yet it was worth so much to her.  I guess it’s easy to please a girl who has no money. Nevertheless she seemed forever neutral, neither demanding of anything nor appreciative of receiving. It was just as it was. But every now and then she lit up like a star and those were precious moments worth waiting for.

  

Later we drove onto Santiago de Cuba just a couple of hours away, took some photos so I can say I’ve been there, withdrew cash, and headed back west along the coastal road.. if you can call it a road. In many places it had disappeared completely, bridges had collapsed, and huge pot-holes blocked the way. Sure it probably was “one of Cuba’s most beautiful routes” as Lonely Planet says, but if you turn your head a moment to appreciate this you will surely end up in a ditch, or the sea.

 
 
 
 

The new plan was to approach Pico Turquino, Cuba’s highest mountain, from the south, apparently a shorter climb, but even so it’s no walk in the park and we were ill-equipped and tired. As it happened anyway we conveniently missed the morning slot to reach the summit, since it had been getting dark and the road was terrible at best, and non-existent at worst, we had stopped a couple of hours short of La Cueva, the base of the climb. But we did manage a shorter but nonetheless treacherous climb of a full 30 meters to reach the summit of a small cliff – home to a cactus which Julia was adamant to add to her collection (she was a keen collector of plants, especially cacti). A nippy little girl she was not afraid to scramble up the loose rock that threatened to throw us both helplessly over the cliff. And with only the occasional bicycle passing I had imagined our skeletal bodies adding doom to the picture of collapsed bridges and abandoned tunnels. Vultures circled as I struggled to find firm ground to descend upon. Loose rocks bounced down the slope causing mini avalanches. I waited for Julia to reach the bottom so as not to knock her out with my clumsy footings onto loose rocks, and anyway she was much faster and nimbler than me.


  

We drive onto the far south-western tip of Cuba, where back in 1956 Fidel and his crew arrived from Mexico and disembarked the famous Granma boat en route to taking over the whole country. I don’t have any political slant, but I have to hand it to these guys - they have balls.

The roads drastically improve and I’m speeding down the empty highway when I spot in my rear-view mirror someone frantically waving a stop sign at me. It appears I missed the check-point into a national park, so I do a u-ey round to greet the friendly receptionist. A small huddle of locals sorts us out with some accommodation; it’s as basic as it gets but has its charms. I try to get a price for the room but instead receive a hand waving response as if this isn’t a part of their vocabulary. So I guess I’ll leave some kind of tip, mainly for hospitality rather than facilities – there’s no running water (it’s on only every other day due to low pressure in the area), and some of the light switches are non-existent – it took some time to work out how to switch off one of the lights at night, but eventually I spotted a couple of stray wires hanging out of a wall, one with a cunning hook bent onto the end. I was impressed by this improvisation. 

 

But the warmth of the reception and the lovely local children more than made up for the lack of modern comforts. So many times I wanted to take pictures, but felt I couldn’t without destroying the moment, so just gave up and enjoyed it as it was.

In the morning Julia greets me to explain she’s accidentally dropped the toothpaste into the toilet bowl. It’s cloudy down there so I just throw a bucket of water in hoping it’ll go away. It does, but then what I dropped down after it certainly didn’t. Never mind, I offset my toilet-guilt with a larger tip and we make a swift getaway.

Julia is a little grumpy this morning, she’s missing home,  now away for 3 days - the longest time in her life, which at 23 might seem surprising but then people don’t really travel here. So I do the tourist thing of visiting the Granma disembarkation beach on my own while she waits in the car with a couple of hitchhikers we picked up in the morning – one of them is a chef at the restaurant we are heading to for lunch, some fantastic seafood and silly cheap prices.

 
 

We stop at a beach for a rest, I go for a swim, and we play in the hammock and watch some locals pass by walking their pigs and dogs.  Later we arrive at Manzanillo where we learn of the news from Venezuela that Chavez has just died. It seems he was genuinely loved by many people in Cuba. A street vendor I get chatting to has a tear in his eye.  A very friendly chap he invites me to stay at his house next time - no need to pay for a casa particular he says as he likes to host the English, and is a keen member of the local John Lennon appreciation society where a band regularly plays Beatle concerts. I take his address and accept his kind offer for next time. I buy some beautiful hand-made maracas from him for a paltry 15p, and he takes special care in giving me back the correct change in local pesos.

The casa particular we stay at is probably amongst the best I’ve been in in Cuba; inside it wouldn’t have been out of place anywhere in northern Europe.  It was a pleasure to rest there, and with such wonderful company. But I was punished for my bad behaviour in bed. I’d gone Catholic and when I desperately demanded a ceasefire mid-charge, I got it… and for good. Voy a castigarte. Ready and cocked there was to be no firing my gun that night.  Maybe I should just have let it all go, so what if I have some little Cuban babies? Nature will have its way one way or another.

 

Next morning, a good breakfast and then more shopping in search for a dress (again, not for me). Good clothes are hard to come by in Cuban shops so the preferred method of purchase is private sale from contraband imports. We ask around and are hushed through a large wooden door, a darkened corridor and into a small apartment. The door is locked behind us and suddenly we’re in a den of colourful clothes and busy women. I enjoy watching Julia strip in the bathroom while she tries on some frilly frocks. It’s all worth it.

Talking of stripping, I’m denied access to two banks for showing too much skin – apparently many public buildings have a no shorts policy. But the Cadeca exchange centre is more relaxed. We pick up some more music for the car, and stop to change and then head back towards her home. She’s excited to be going home, and all dressed up like new. I’m also excited – I’m curious to know what it’ll be like to meet her family and from what I’ve seen of Cubans so far I expect them to be very hospitable. But their insistence on slaughtering a pig or lamb did come as a surprise. Anywhere else I’d have expected them to slaughter me for kidnapping one of their women-folk without warning.

 

But the highs don’t come for free, and whilst I had a great time with Julia, and with her family, when it came to moving on I suffered and continue to do so, but as a kind of pool of emotional debt piled up from all the women I have left since the one I left when I was born.  As long as I behave as a boy, the women I meet represent my mother and so I must leave them at some point, painful as that is, for me and for them.  But I hold fold memories and the tear that wells is equally of happiness shared as it is of loss.

I’m back on the road alone, and for the first time in months I feel depressed, but it will pass, I’m determined not to be a victim…

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[some names have been changed to protect privacy]