Hasta luego, Cuba!

February 18, 2008

TRINIDAD - It's easy to see why tourists - including us, of course - come here. The town is magnificent. It is another Cienfuegos, a little larger and more beautiful, a lot of more self-conscious.

Cienfuegos has tourists but Trinidad is the place people come on buses from the established beach resorts. We escaped it all, arriving by bike, but word says the touts waiting for buses are so numerous and even aggressive that the bus station fences them off from the arrivals so that passengers have at least a moment of peace in which to collect their luggage.

The most striking feature of the town, the thing that picks it out from elsewhere, is that nearly all the streets are cobbled. Or, more precisely, laid with stones. They are everywhere and they tell the town's history, because they are drawn for the most part from the ballast of ships that once called here. For much of its life, Trinidad was a haven for slave-traders, for the British who briefly owned the place, for the Spanish who traded here, and for the American sugar-traders who eventually settled here. When their ships sailed in empty, they unloaded the ballast they carried to keep them upright before sailing off again with cargo. I've never given a thought to what happens or happened to ballast elsewhere - maybe it's exchanged between ships - but here the stones were turned into roads, supplemented by other stone washed up by rivers.

Now it is a bustling place and it's hard to appreciate the town's history, which recounts that it was in severe decline by the 1950s, its only real function being to provide a base for counter-revolutionaries who fought Castro to the end and took refuge in the surrounding mountains. There's a museum to show how the new regime dealt with them, not surprisingly told by the winners rather than the losers, and it's housed in an old convent. It says something of the repeated beauty of buildings, and the low-key way in which even big moments in Cuba's history are sometimes handled, that we wandered into the convent without realising it was one of the very places we'd wanted to see.

The place is full of confusing maps of colours and arrows, the sort of charts that only generals understand, and of old uniforms and bits of fallen aeroplanes, including a chunk of an American U2 spy plane.

How many million dollars would just this bit of a U2 spy plane have been worth at the time, do you think?

Across the perfectly shaped square we found the architectural museum, a hotchpotch of examples of building styles and materials from adobe to modern times. It's the former house of a rich American who built not just a mansion but a tranquil courtyard in which, for some reason, he felt it essential to have a row of lavatories and showers. It is hard to make changes to a lavatory over the years but the showers were different. There were pipes and cages and dials and meters everywhere, the whole looking more a torture chamber than a place for a relaxed soaping.

More like a torture chamber than a place for a little luxurious soaping...

Now, while I am writing from Trinidad, a few days have slipped by. After time off here, we left what bags we could at our bed-and-breakfast and rode out of town back the way we had come and then turned right, where the Tour of Cuba had gone, up to Topes de Collantes. We knew it wasn't going to be easy. That's why we were doing it and why we had shed such surplus weight as we could. We were in for just 60 paces short of a full kilometre of climbing. By which I mean not that we were to climb for a kilometre, which isn't much, but that by the time we were finished we would be a kilometre closer to the moon. And all that in 14km.

Now, Cuba has a good supply of men with long, smiling, half-toothed faces itching to tell you how unwise you were to come their way. That morning they lined up to see us pass and to whistle through generous gaps in their teeth and chuckle and make aeroplane-taking-off signs and cartoonist expressions which said "If only you know what you're in for..."

And they were right, of course. But then we knew that. And that's why we'd come, because the road up to Topes de Collantes is through a rainforest of thick vegetation, on a road which hadn't seen a repair crew in a while, and with gorgeous views back over the plain and the Caribbean.

High above Trinidad and still going up. Often we had to walk but the views paid us back a dozenfold.

Cuba had the wisdom to rule all this a national park and so there are few houses and no industry and the peace is broken only by growling Russian army trucks that carry standing tourists to the summit in a style which, when they write home on postcards, the passengers probably call "ethnic" or "local" or "authentic". They were a nuisance sometimes, those trucks, but they were better than the occasional tour bus. At least for the main part people in trucks waved and cheered, especially a group of Dutch people who had a year or two earlier ridden from Holland to Rome. "We did some hills on that trip, too", a woman told me later, "but nothing like that. I could see from the looks on your faces how hard it was."

Our computers showed a maximum gradient of 19 per cent. We thought that quite something. The next day we were in for steeper.

Topes de Collantes, at the summit, is a straggle of houses, then a gap, then a curious, otherworldly place of hotels and a reception office. The most striking building is a vast brown-and-grime hotel designed by students of the East Berlin School of Architecture. If your grasp of building design were to use matchboxes and matchsticks then this is what you would end up with. It was bigger and uglier than even the state hotels in Romania. And yet it has nothing to do with the communist era. It was built by the old dictator, Batista, who had all the money he needed and could call on the best architects in the world. I think he sketched out the design himself.

Glorious in its awfulness: one side of Batista's hotel on the hill at Topes de Collantes

Why did he build it? Because up here in the hills there is a spring and that and the mountain air are supposed to be good for body and soul. The hotel now is open only to Cubans. Or, at any rate, when we wandered in on the news that there was a shop inside, we caused enough of a ripple that we were politely, very politely and almost imperceptibly escorted back out again. It caters now for anyone who cares to go up there but especially for those who don't mind wandering about in green and white tracksuits that show they are taking a cure. Alongside this monstrosity but distant from it were two modern hotels to the left, catering for foreign trade, and a collection of campismo-like chalets to the right.

To be sure we would have a bed when we set off, we had called at the Cubanacan tourist office in Trinidad. The tourist desk was at the end of a bar and didn't have its own phone. The woman, smiling despite lined lipstick which gave her a sourer expression than she would have chosen, walked the length of the bar with every query and picked up a phone down there. When she got the answer, it was that "All the hotels are full but I have a friend up there and she says that she can find you somewhere." It was on that hope that we tackled the climb. As it turned out, almost all the chalets were empty. That was the good news. The bad news was that there was no water, hot or cold. It had gone off at eight that morning and would be back in five minutes, said the receptionist. Or that's what I thought she'd said. What she'd actually said was that it wouldn't be back until five o'clock.

We were aghast. We streamed with sweat, we had dust stuck to us and we had more than our share of diesel fumes clinging to us from the slow-moving, loaded trucks. Sympathy, but no running water. Instead, a bucket of hot water in which to wash. At eight o'clock, 12 hours after it had gone off and three hours after it was promised to return, the water came back.

From Topes there is a path that runs to a waterfall. We walked down it, stopping for a cold drink on the way from an enterprising local who had built a small bar there.

...stopping for a cold drink from an enterprising local...

...and enjoying the views from a distance...

And next day we rode off west along a half-surfaced path along the ridge of the mountains, now confronting ascents of 24 per cent. Not long - just as well because at that steepness you'd get to the stars in an hour - and on a road that a fat man in a pickup said couldn't be done.

Almost one-in-four: the steepest I've ever been up. How about you?

And yes, there are fat men in pickups here as well. And as full of advice as elsewhere. "You can't get through on a bike," he wheezed through his open window. "Only heavy trucks can do it. Believe me, it's impossible."

Well, as I said earlier, those who know most about cycling are those who never do any. And the fatter they are, the more obvious it is that they don't. It's true he had local knowledge and there was the nagging worry that he was right. But he'd just driven from where we planned to go and so the bit about only trucks making it was wrong. We decided to take the chance. And you can guess what happened: it wasn't perfect but it was fine. When walked, it was rarely because of the bad surface: it was because of the gradient, usually up but also down.

The real joke came after three-quarters of an hour. Reflecting from the hills behind us we heard the heavy growling of a truck. Without looking back, we moved to one side to let it pass. But it didn't pass. When we looked back, we saw we'd been tricked by the sound and the echo. The truck was several hundred metres behind and, for all that it was reputed to be the big beast of the jungle, uniquely able to cope with the rough road, it was going barely faster than we were. And with more difficulty.

To the driver's credit, he waved not only in greeting but to offer us a ride. We waved our gratitude and rode on. Now there were birds of all colours and songs we had never heard before. The vegetation was rich green and cloud-forest, the mountains rising to our right and the land rolling downwards to our left. Butterflies with yellow wings dotted with black went about their way and now and then we'd pass isolated mountain houses with incongruously well-kept gardens. And twice we rode through linear villages of unmade roads but each with a small, neat primary school.

Isolated linear villages, each with their neat little school...

...and kids doing physical jerks in the sunshine.

It's funny to reflect that three weeks ago these villages seemed so remote, so primitive. And how normal and friendly and welcoming they seem now. We are always stared at, of course, just as we have always been when we wander off the tourist trail. But "noticed" would be a better word. We are once more strangers in areas that see few of them but are curious rather than hostile when they do. When I asked the Dutch woman who'd waved to us on the way to Topes de Collantes what her first reaction was to Cuba, she'd said: "It was the joy, the spontaneous joy of the people." And that, once their surprise had worn off, was what we experienced today. Happy surprise, happy welcome. Everyone shouts "Ola!" and asks a question.

"Where are you from?"

"Where are you going?"

And if children spot us, oh what commotion! They shout and wave from further than anyone can shout and wave and set off running towards us with whoops of excitement. Si, la genta de Cuba me gusta mucho.

Little by little our track improved until it became consistently ridable if bumpy. The vegetation grew less lush as we crossed the divide and we saw more small steep fields of coffee. Although this is a national park, there is conflict between those who want to save it from what it had once been - an area denuded and then planted with coffee or just left clear of timber - and those who like the scenery but consider that the right to earn a living is paramount. It's a difficult and permanent contradiction, not least in a poor land.

Finally the road dropped suddenly into the coastal plain. And almost immediately I collected three punctures. I never puncture on rough roads, only in well-surfaced ones. We stopped on the descent to mend the final deflation, which I think came from the heat of the rims as I held the brakes on to avoid being thrown off at speed on the bumpy tar, and almost immediately we were joined by a deep brown and hunched woman coming the other way carrying her bags. It soon became obvious that we were dealing with a Mumbling Woman, the sort of ancient you see in public libraries, making incomprehensible notes and sudden noises. I am happy, indeed eager, to talk to everyone but sometimes it proves impossible.

"Ola soyendoparamuchocompipiparagututungruti," she said. Roughly, anyway.

"Desculpe... Soy ingles. No estiendo."

She looked taken aback. How could anyone, even a foreigner, not understand? And when she had regathered her forces, she said: "Ponchera, ponchera!"

Someone's bike's outside so the ponchera is in there somewhere...

That, at least, I understood. A flat tyre in Cuba is common. Common enough that many villages have professional puncture-menders, called poncheras. Mumbling Woman went on a bit about her local ponchera and despaired when we didn't take her advice. She seemed entirely disappointed when I got the tube into the tyre and pumped it back up again without a hiss of failure. We wished her goodbye and she got up from the grass and gathered her bags and carried on up the hill, still grumbling about life and its foolish foreigners.

Just by the roadside. Can't tell you why.

We turned off through the village at the foot of the drop, rode down to the coast road we had ridden days earlier on the way from Cienfuegos and noticed that the wind was blowing only a little less. That night we stayed, at twice the usual price, at a collection of chalets and restaurants with their own pool that overlooked the Caribbean and a river entrance that led to a sandy harbour for small boats.

Luxury for our last night on the road. Now, how do I get that dog off the bridge?

With just 40km to do next morning, we treated ourselves to a morning round the pool, a leisurely ride back to Trinidad, a day at the beach when we were there, then made the usual bargain with the luggage-loaders to make sure our bikes got into the coach taking us back to Havana.

And there, to our regret, the trip was over. We hadn't ridden all that far - less than we'd normally have ridden - but that had never been the plan. In the word cycle-touring, there is a balance to be drawn between "cycle" and "touring". Sometimes there is more cycling than touring. Sometimes that's justified and sometimes it's simply a mistake. At other times, when there is so much to savour, so much to understand, so many to talk to, to hurry, to run up huge distances, would be a mistake. A big mistake. It's one we managed to avoid, I hope.

Cuba is a lovely place. You need to understand it and you'll remember that in the first days the frustrations of eating and sleeping and obtaining the local currency were enough to tempt us back to the airport and the plane to Europe. But that passed. After that there was little but pleasure, nothing but adventure and discovery.

Will we go back? Of course we will. Places ran out before the time did. We'd like to have gone on down to the south-east, to the real mountains and the long coast roads, but to have done so would have meant more days in a bus and too little time to ride once we got there. Cuba doesn't look that big on a map of the world but it's pretty large when you get there.

So, next time... Because, yes, there will be a next time. Hasta luego, Cuba!

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