Tracks of tears

February 18, 2008

GUANABO - "It's very hard for us with the blockade," said the man who showed us round the international bike track and who looked smart enough to be in charge of all Cuban cycling. "But we have friends in Italy and in other countries and they are kind to us and we depend on them."

We met at the international sports centre across the river from Havana. On one side of the road is the main stadium for the 1991 Pan-American Games and on the other is the velodrome. Next to the main stadium is a park with metal sculptures of boxers, basketball players, volleyballers and perhaps others I have forgotten. Beyond them is what I imagine was the athletes' accommodation, now turned into housing, and behind both the deep blue of the sea. I don't know if his picture was there during the games but these days Che Guevara looks down with a certain inevitability on the running track.

The velodrome is in the less striking surroundings of a car park and the buildings used for indoor sports such as volleyball. The track is beautiful, smooth, hard-surfaced and without a blemish. It is 333 metres round, steeply but not too tightly banked, and surrounded by seating for thousands. The bike track is in better shape than the athletics arena, which could mean that it is better maintained because it is more frequently used or, conversely, that it is used too little for it to have started to fray.

"No, it is well used," said our guide, who'd interrupted his work and come out of his office to show us around without an appointment. "There are a lot of cyclists here. We start with the young riders, then take them up through the age groups until they're seniors." But never to professionalism because that, he said, would be against the spirit of the nation. But then professionalism, as other scrupulous nations have found, is only a word; if it means not being paid to ride round with the name of a pregnancy-testing service or a money-lending company on your back, I get the impression that it doesn't exclude having a full-time job as an athlete given by the state.

Sergio "Pipián" Martínez, winner for Cuba of the Tour of Cuba in 1964

"There's a Tour of Cuba as well. It's on at the moment."

We said we'd read about it and asked where it went. He reeled off a list of towns, some of which we had heard of, others which we hadn't, all of which seemed to involve improbably hilly routes. A few years ago the Vuelta a Cuba took the broken trail up through the national park that Henry had told us would take six days' recovery. It is not the easiest of national tours.

"There's a Cuban national team, of course. And one from Mexico and from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and elsewhere in Latin America. And two Italian teams and a small German professional one. We used to have more teams from Italy and from Spain, but..." The sentence ended in the international sign of rubbing the first two fingers against the thumb. Cuba doesn't have the money, is the message.

Our day started not here but in Pinar del Rio. But even that jumps a bit. I left you in Vinales, having gone down the cave and fled from hostile chickens. Vinales was as far west on the island that it was practical to go. There are other roads that go further but, as I mentioned before, the problem in Cuba is rarely the roads but often the accommodation. So far as we could work out, to go any further would involve carrying food for four days and being prepared to sleep under hedges.

We could have turned round and ridden back east but that would have meant either going back pretty much the way we came or riding the long, flat main road that avoided the tough climbs but risked eternal damage to the soul. So instead we rode to Pinar del Rio and caught a bus from there to Havana.

There are bus services all over Cuba. Transport here is fascinating. At the most basic is cadging a lift, in a car if you're lucky, more usually in the back of a truck.

Just a few standing: room for several dozen more

Then come the enormous camel buses, so called because they have two humps where the body of the bus rises above the wheels. Camel buses are great cities on wheels. They are enormously long and they are pulled by great tractor units. They are articulated trucks, but bigger, but they are buses. To judge by those packed inside, standing shoulder to shoulder, they can carry 150 people at a time.

Forget the big star in the foreground. It is the sign of a properly communist country that it has stars everywhere. Look instead at the shelter in the background. They're all over the place in Cuba, either to protect bus customers from the sun or, in this case, to give a bit of comfort to those trying to cadge a lift in a truck. Where a lot of people gather, there is often a queue supervisor to question drivers and passengers and bring them properly together.

Camel buses seem a uniquely Cuban proposition. I don't doubt you could get on one as a westerner but the question is whether you would want to, other than for the experience, and whether you might be seen somehow invading and potentially pushing up the prices of one of the novelties that Cubans have invented for themselves to beat the transport problem. If the buses filled up with westerners who already influence prices by their very presence, then what would be left for ordinary people to get to work or from city to city? I wanted to have a go but, assuming my guesses are right, I wouldn't want to spoil things for others by my presence.

Next up the scale are buses that hold perhaps 50 people, more if they stand, like an ordinary coach. They are run by the main bus companies such as Astra but they aim at the domestic market. They're not exclusive - we have caught them on this trip - but the degree of luxury is reflected in the humble price. These buses and those like them that run back and forth along set routes through town often show their origins. Some are German but many are Dutch, still heading for Rotterdam or Amsterdam according to the destination panels that nobody has thought to change, still advertising the "nooduitgang" in case of emergency or the "verbandtrommel" should there be an injury.

A Canadian cyclist was asked once if you could take a bike on a Cuban bus. From his experience, he answered: "It would appear you can take anything on a Cuban bus."

I never saw anyone get off with a goat or a chicken but it wouldn't have surprised me.

When does the bus leave? Just as soon as the pig is ready, señor!

The big companies are less enthusiastic about goats and hens. They run air-conditioned Far Eastern buses with uniformed drivers and attendants. The bus stations may not be much but the buses are great. The companies are all state-owned, which is what the blue number plates signify, but they compete. Viazul got our vote because they take bikes whereas Astra doesn't. In theory the bikes are supposed to be in boxes, but there are no boxes in Cuba so that settles that. The routine, therefore, is to catch the driver or the loader's eye. Money will then change hands. Either you offer a convertible peso and wait for the price to be raised, or you look inquiringly and wait for it to be quoted. It will be.

Inter-city buses are made in China and elsewhere in the Far East, air-conditioned and rarely contain goats or hens.

We spent an hour or so in the uninviting bus station at Pinar del Rio, watching schools television and being instructed in the properties of chemical solution and then the history of Cuba in the middle ages, then rode from Havana's bus station on the outskirts down to the harbour. From there, there's a choice of ferries, of which the one to the romantically named Casablanca was ours.

Should you go that way, be prepared for Casablanca to be pronounced "Cuzz-blung". And be prepared for pretty thorough security checks. Nobody explained why, for such a short journey, but I suppose any ferry that can make its way across a tidal river mouth could also be hijacked to Miami. It happened some time ago, I think, and the electronic frisking and the searching of bags shows they're not keen for it to happen again.

Up above Cuzzblung is a Rio-like state of Christ looking down on the Cubans at his feet. Maybe he is sniffing at their loose morals. Sex and sexuality are not wicked words in Cuba and men and women alike compete to show as much bare skin as they can. There are few full-time prostitutes - in fact prostitution is illegal, for fear of a return to the Mafia-run rackets of the 1950s, but it is openly tolerated - but by all accounts no shortage of part-timers happy to thicken out the family budget by taking money for what they also enjoy doing for nothing. Cuba doesn't reek of sex but it's a long way from prudish.

...at everything you're up to down there

To be truthful, the ride across Havana was a pain. It was one of those hot afternoons in traffic, on bumpy roads, not quite knowing where you're going, when you wish life would just leave you alone. Apart from the view back over Havana from the level of Jesus's toes, it didn't get that much better on the other side of the river either. We were in a capital city; capital cities are rarely fun to be in or to get out of.

Seeking a ride beside the sea, we found ourselves riding beside one apartment block after another, against a tough wind and on roads that would have kept a dentist happy for weeks. Each block of flats grew uglier than the one before and the effect was again reminiscent of Romania's worst suburbs. Later we found that it was the largest area of public housing in the world - not something I sniff at because I grew up in publicly-assisted housing - and that the difference from Causescu's monstrosities was marked. For while the Romanian buffoon slapped up concrete and reinforcing in a mad and unrealisable dream of creating a practical and beautiful city, Cuba has given these areas a lot of thought. Forget the shabby paint and the suffering facades; within each block or group of blocks there are schools, libraries, gyms, doctors, hospitals, meeting places and everything else that society needs. It is a poor nation's decision to spend money on what makes a difference to lives rather than on another pot of expensive paint. Romania did neither. Hence the difference.

Tonight we are in a seaside village, a place given over almost entirely to holiday homes that can be rented by the night, the week or the month. We are in a private house, an unlicensed one, found in some desperation after circuiting the streets looking for the little blue symbol we need. Tired and disillusioned, I asked a woman sweeping the street. It was a touch of genius, although quite accidental, because I came to realise that anyone who just goes slowly round a town every day will know everybody and everybody's business.

We started calling at a couple of registered houses. "Calling" is the perfect gerund because the technique adopted was to stand in the street and bellow a name until the shouting was answered. Each house passed us on to someone else, including registered to unregistered. That surprised me because you'd think there'd be resistance, the official houses paying a lot of tax and permit fees and their owners being, you'd think, resentful of those who paid nothing. But this is Cuba and perhaps different rules apply. Perhaps, despite my friend who suggested some while back that there was little cheating of the government because people realised they were just stealing from themselves, the honest see more affinity with the dishonest than they do with the tax collector. There is nothing like a common enemy to make friends of us all.

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