Cuba’s Port Of Hope

How a great deal about Cuba can you discover by traveling via the Viñales Valley on a bike? Turns out, rather a lot.

By Luke Armstrong

Moments just before my plane touched down in Havana, an Australian had turned to me to ask me why I was going to Cuba. I guess I was not precisely sure myself. As an American, I am not supposed to travel to Cuba, but there is anything about a forbidden fruit that tends to make it tastier than the stuff you can get at the grocery shop. Keep in mind how drinking alcohol lost a thing as soon as we became of age? Precisely.

Soon after a short keep in Havana, gravitation and my Lonely Planet guide lead me to the relaxed town of Viñales. My guidebook tells me that in 1999 the valley was declared a Unesco Planet Heritage Website. I make a mental note to Google what such a declaration really entails.

Walking by means of the slow streets as I make my way to the Cubanacán travel workplace to rent a bike, a young man rides up flashing me his yellow bike. “You want to rent my bike?” he asks. “Best bike in all of Cuba. Try it out if you do not believe me”

I give his bike a spin about the block. The gears alter and the brakes squeak to an eventual halt. It appears as good a bike as I will uncover anywhere else and the fake shocks give the impression that the rider indicates significant bike riding company. I give him 5 pesos to use it for the day and he tells me to appear for him around town when I come back to return the bike. “If you cannot discover me just ask any one exactly where José is.”

With José’s mountain bike cruising underneath me, I set out from Viñales to the seaport of Puerta Esperanza (Port of Hope) on Cuba’s Northern coast, a nice 50km bike ride via the oft-photographed Valle de Viñales.

The ride meanders through a curvy country road in between limestone cliffs looming across the green landscape. It is a backdrop of beauty that geology has spent 100 million years sculpting prehistoric rivers gradually carving underground caverns that collapsed to type the valley, their former walls the cliffs.

Puerta Esperanza itself is a dwindling seaside village whose port has been out of operation due to the fact 1951. A location whose present is finest understood by romanticizing its past. Its rusty pier stretches out to the sea longingly, reaching out to beckon boats that stopped coming lengthy ago. Unhurried streets are flanked by fishermen’s shanties and ancient mango trees that still bear fruit, a tribute to the 19th-century slaves who planted them.

I eat my sack lunch on the waterfront and send away a disappointed kid who is certain I wanted to buy shells, particular shells that only he knows how to obtain.

Sated from lunch and relaxed from the languorous ambiance, I stroll from the retired pier more than to a creating with Che’s face on the side. Just before finding close adequate to snap a picture, a shirtless teenager emerges from it puffing a cigar. He tells me that I have to have to stroll back the other way due to the fact this is a military zone. I turn around, content that if I am ever asked in any of my often absurd bar conversations about a good spot to invade Cuba by sea, I can deviously drum my fingers together and say, “I know just the spot . . .”

I continue unsystematically walking Cuba’s best bike via the streets, absorbing what I could of the present, smiling and nodding at residents. When I pass a home with numerous plastic tables in the front yard, a beautiful lady rushes out to inform me that I ought to stop off at her restaurant for a mojito. I agree, taken in by her surprising green eyes and the prospect of a cold drink just before the uphill battle back to Viñales.

As I drink she passes my table to cast shy tiny glances my way. Just prior to I fall in love, she stops by my table and gyrates her pelvis towards me. “You want fucki-fucki?” she asks. Assuming her proposition involves some sort of monetary commitment, I decline. She smiles a suit-oneself grin and walks to the side of her property exactly where she matter-of-factly says to somebody I hope is not her husband, “No, he does not want fucki-fucki.”

A few kilometers into my return, my thoughts drifts off, contemplating the alternate universe exactly where I would have said yes to the lady. Lost in speculation, the seat of Cuba’s very best bike all of a sudden slams down onto the frame. I stagger off the bike to appraise the damage. A man whom I had just passed as he crept along the road on his tractor pulls more than to admire the broken seat with me in the universal way males assess all issues broken.

He tries to raise the seat to its original height and tighten the bolt, but with out results. He shows me how the groves of the screw had been worn down in the place they were required. “Chinese parts,” he says, “always break. Where are you from? Italy?” I inform him. “Oh! United States!”

He smiles, wild with excitement about my origin and goes back to his tractor exactly where he loosens a nut from under its seat and brings it over to my bike. He places this more than the other one, covering the stripped grooves and is capable to right the seat. “Cuban creativity beats Chinese garbage parts,” he announces with a proud frustration.

I present him a few pesos for his efforts but he waves them off indignantly, content material for the day with a $12 month-to-month government salary and his kindness.

Five kilometers down the road, as I am thinking about how my opinions about the embargo had changed since my arrival and asking yourself irrespective of whether it will be lifted under the Obama administration, Cuba’s ideal bike veers violently to the left almost crashing. The left pedal has snapped off. It lies numerous yards behind me on the road. I choose it up and hold it in its former position, attempting to will reconciliation amongst bike and prodigal pedal. Chinese trash parts. The metal rod holding the pedal in location has decided that sufficient is sufficient, and snapped off.

The road is empty and I’m alone with with Cuba’s most useless bike, 20 kilometers away from the nearest human speak to. Devoid of other options, I walk the bike up the road. As other bikers overtake me, I feel self-conscious that I seem to be what my higher school track coach would have referred to as “A small wussy boy who couldn’t ride his bike up the huge hills.”

I finish off the last of my water and understand I will be lucky to make it back before midnight. I cease and look off into the distance exactly where limestone cliffs shoot shockingly up from the emerald ground. Above it all, the sun blazes intensely from its blue heaven. Why do I in no way bring sufficient water? At the major of a hill where I’ve stopped sit three men underneath a tree by the side of the road. They shout to me, “Eh!”

I walk more than to them and they extend a plastic glass of rum. “We are drinking rum due to the fact it is Saturday!” The rum comes from a tiny carton resembling a juice box. I raise it higher and toast Cuba.

“Oye, exactly where you from?”

“I’m American.”

“United States! Bush does not let you come here does he?”

“No. That is sorta why I’m right here.”

“Where did you find out Spanish?” he asks, then continues without having waiting for my response. “Take a different drink of Rum! It’s Saturday!”

The 3 Cubans are waiting for a automobile or truck that will take them south. They are beaming and vibrant perpetually slapping each and every other on the back to express the pleasure they take in every single other’s firm. Pablo is round and young he is not truly waiting for a ride but as an alternative waiting with his pals to hold them organization. He is very interested to know if I like Fidel and Raul. I tell him that anyone was better than our last president and he laughs, relieved. I put my bike on its side to wait with them for a ride.

His two friends, Pancho and Luis, are father and son, heading south to visit relatives. Luis is an electrician, militantly hidden behind a pair of aviators. He provides Pancho a appear of caution every time he gulps down a swig of rum. “Slowly, we have all day,” he admonishes his son. Pancho just laughs, “Don’t worry papí, Cuba will never ever run out of Rum!”

Right after an hour goes by, I ask if there really will be a ride passing. “Yes, yes,” assures Pablo, “you just have to wait. If one does not come in 20 minutes, no trouble, I will bring additional rum.”

Luis looks at the broken bike suspiciously, mumbling something about the Chinese. When yet another half hour passes, Pablo brings much more rum, “The Cuban way of waiting,” he says as he raises his drink. “Viva Fidel, viva Raul, viva Che y viva la revolución!”

He passes me the rum and I toast Cuba and Barack Obama. The Cubans wait festively even though I begin to be concerned a truck is not coming, impatiently surrounded by incredible natural beauty and unassuming friendliness. Just after a whilst the tractor chugs past with its driver beaming and waving whilst yelling, “America!”

I maintain asking them if a truck is in reality going to pass. Pablo laughs off what he calls my American hurry. “No te preocupes,” he says. “One is coming quite soon. I can really feel it. Right here, have a shot of rum. We only drink on Saturdays, and at times on Fridays, and often on Sundays for the reason that it’s the Lord’s day . . . and on Mondays also if my lady is nevertheless angry with me for drinking on Sunday.”

Luis, who has been eyeing my broken bike for a extended time, requires out his machete and walks over to a fence post to hack off a significant chunk of it. He cuts grooves in the chunk and then fastens it onto the bike with electrical wire. It hangs doubtfully from where the prior pedal has jumped ship.

Just after a handful of minutes of staring down his makeshift pedal, he lifts the bike and rides it in circles on the road. Grinning like a kid who has gone on the major toilet for the 1st time, he brings it to me for inspection. I get on the bike and try it out. It works! Cuban creativity has as soon as once again trumped Chinese garbage parts.

With the bike after again Cuba’s best, I say goodbye to the trio. They insist I make a toast prior to I left. I toast Luis and tipsily continue the ride.

On the way back I pass a half dozen cars from the fifties, running on nothing at all but the Cubans’ will to keep them on the road. I ponder how the Cubans are producing it all operate. How in spite of the world’s most potent country being eager to bring about its collapse for fifty years, the nation is still running — at occasions as crudely as its classic automobiles, but nonetheless operating. If the truck under no circumstances comes, some thing else does.

Towards the finish of the ride, as the sun begins its violet escape behind the limestone cliffs, I appear down at my bike’s wooden pedal. The electrical wire is gradually loosening beneath the strain and will not last extended. But it is functional and it will get me to where I am going with out needing to go further. It is a short-term resolution that permits the bigger issue to be pushed into the deep and hopeful sea of Cuba’s tomorrow.

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