coast to coast

Our aim is Matanzas, the city on the north coast and the landscape is flat.  We feel comfotable about getting there in one day, but there is no direct road so we have to work out a route.  The journey takes us past marshes and through farmland.  We pass several large state-run farms with barracks for the workers. It's a hot and windy ride with a run in to the city along the shore.  Only a couple of blocks form the main plaza we find a lovely renovated old house with the familiar blue sign hanging up.  Regrettably they have a booking so we can only stay one night but the owner takes us to his mum's place the next morning.  This is also in an old house.  She has a group of Americans coming but let's us stay anyway.  The Americans are Quakers from Pennsylvania looking at some of the projects they support in Cuba.

a rather nice restoration

Matanzas is a big sprawl of a city and we enjoy wandering around.  While we're standing outside a Chinese restaurant trying to get in the locked door Gayle spots the Dutch cyclists we didn't meet in Cienfuegos.  We apologise for our error and end up eating Chinese with them.  In the meantime they have been celebrating a birthday with two nights in an all-inclusive in nearby Varadero - Cuba's oldest luxury resort beach.  The Dutch describe to us their horror at the obscene amounts of fresh food, fish, meat, fruit and vegetables which they found there, although I suspect they would have been equally horrified if they hadn't found any.  And so much food piled on tourists' plates and so much food thrown away.  A crime, they say.

a 'fresh' beer caravan

Leaving the city we take a back road into a hidden valley.  This dirt road parallels the coast and takes us through small villages and pretty farmland, before finally emerging on the main coastal highway.  We stop in a small beach town, not far east of Havana.

And then we are cycling back into the capital city, looping around the bay, up and down hills, through neighbourhoods of ugly communist-era appartment blocks and then down by the old waterfront and the run-down streets full of the Old Town not reached yet by the renovation projects.  We return to our original Airbnb appartment in Chinatown where our bike boxes have been stored under a bed.  It feels good to be back here where the sun seems to always shine and a breeze keeps everything fresh.  We enjoy our last few days here before flying back to Cancun.

Santeria followers are easily identified

 

perhaps this photo sums up Cuba best

do the hustle

lacework on show at a ruined sugar mill

some of the great scenery around Trinidad

Like Havana's Old Town, Trinidad has UNESCO World Heritage status.  It is on most tourists' itinerary when they come to Cuba as we realised when we can't find a room in any casa.  They are all full.  Looking further afield the standards drop.  We keep looking - and finally find a frilly pink room with a roof terrace.  Our charmless hostess has clearly seen many tourists come and go.  The sense that we are treated slightly differently here - because there are so many tourists, it seems to be the sole income source for the town - puts us off the place. 

It is very pretty - the old courtyard houses and cobbled streets climb up a hillside overlooking the sea.  We enjoy walking around.  There are tourist shops selling clothes and crafts, restaurants that look like restaurants, rather than someone's front room.  And bars with live music, the sound of the Buena Vista Social Club drifting across the streets.  It occurs to us we only hear bands playing this music in tourist places - but how else can they earn any money?

After a couple of nights we're ready to head off early.  We are quickly on the coastal road going west when we start to notice the dead crabs on the road. A friend had described to us this scene - driving down a road covered in crabs.  Up ahead of us there's a line of traffic.  Taxis and cars are threading their way slowly through a sea of migrating crabs.  Accompanying the awful smell of dying crabs is the pitter patter of claws as the crabs skitter in all directions as vehicles come close.  We soon find ourselves ahead of the cars - someone tells us later that the drivers are worried about punctures.  We have no such fear although I do wonder if the crabs might see us as fair game.  I do not want to stop.  Gayle tries to take photos but the crabs pinch her feet when she stops.

Nearing Cienfuegos we meet two Dutch cyclists taking a rest in the shade at a junction.  They make a reference to it being an easy day for them. They also have come from Trinidad.  It's a kind of macho thing to say, I think.  All I want to say is "Did you see the crabs!!!" Instead I say nothing while they explain why they're going to take the easy flat road to Cienfuegos instead of the up and down road along the shoreline of the bay.  We'll take the up and down road.  And we'll get to Cienfuegos afore ye!  And then to my dismay Gayle agrees to meet with them in the main plaza, in front of the church, at five o'clock.  None of has been to the city but we assume there's a church in the main plaza.

After our up and down journey into the city we find a casa on a main road in an old house.  The rooms are along an open corridor linking the big reception room to a kitchen out the back.  A youngish man lets us in.  He seems a bit simple. The owner is a chubby bald man who speaks some English.  We head off to meet the Dutch cyclists but they don't show.  So we go for a look around the city centre and to find some food.  It's only a few day's later that we learn the clocks have gone forward one hour in Cuba and we didn't know.  Either that or we have been travelling in Cuba for five weeks on the wrong time.  

he's behind you!

Cienfuegos is another city buit by French settlers

In the morning there's a woman cleaning in the casa.  We have been chatting with another guest - a young German who arrived last night.  The cleaner looks like she is going into our open room, so I quickly get up and follow her in.  The owner appears.  Do we want our room cleaned?  No thanks.  No-one in Cuba has cleaned a room we've stayed in while we're there.  Before we go out to the market we close all our panniers.  It was a prescient move. The cleaning woman also reminds us to lock our room door before we leave.  How helpful of her. When we return about two hours later it is clear all the panniers have been opened, because they haven't been closed properly.   A quick check and we can't find anything missing.  We carry our passports and valuables with us.  Inevitably we suspect the cleaner.  I find the owner and tell him someone has been into our room and opened all our bags. He acts horrified and then defensive.  We soon suspect that he is in on the act, or at least is protecting his cleaner, but as he correctly points out to us, after asking, if nothing has been stolen then what is there to do?  We leave and find another casa.

Our route out of the city is to head around the bay and out to a point near the coast where we can access a sandy dirt track along the coast.  Another cyclist has told us how to find the aceess to it and his description is really useful.  He didn't mention the nuclear power station. (Apparently it was never completed by the Russians.) Only at the point when we head off the road do we need to check we're at the right place - the track is not marked or signposted.  

We have a wonderful ride that sticks very close to the shore.  The track is alternately sandy or rocky but we can cycle most of it quite easily and this day's cycling gets rid of any residue of bad feeling we have about Cienfuegos.  The track spits us out onto a dirt road that becomes tarmac and leads to a beach called Playa Giron. There's a small village here and we stop for the night.  This was the beach used in the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion.  It's a pleasant quiet place these days.

On the way to Playa Larga we find a couple of rocky coves where Gayle can swim. The water is turquoise and very clean. In the Playa Larga village there's a kiosk selling snacks and that all-important home-made caramel custard.  It would seem churlish not to stay a few nights.

criss-crossing

We are bored and fed up with being on the main road all the time and as there is an opportunity for a detour northwards, we decide to take it.  We first stop in the wonderfully-named Moron.  We wandered around as always, enjoying the street activity, the small kiosks and shops, the hustle and bustle.  So strange because we think there's nothing to buy.  We ask about a market to find some vegetables.  Somewhere we find something. We do not go hungry.  

has she got cake? where d'ya think she got that?

 

no, not that hungry

 Our ride west along a smaller road proves to be a good choice.  We pass through several small villages and find roast pork sandwiches being sold in one, cold pop to drink in another.  The ride is long and hot.  As we've given up on camping we're now always planning to reach a town where we can find a casa.
Along the way we meet two cyclists who have descended from the hills.  We have stopped in the shade of a cafe and I go inside to get a drink.  At the counter are a bunch of young black men and women.  Nothing unusual about that in Cuba.  But as I am checking out what's in the fridge behind the counter I realise someone is speaking in a posh English accent.  I look again at the customers - they're British tourists.  Outside we chat a bit before they head off to their resort hotel in two yellow taxis.

We end our day in an extremely shabby and forgotten town called Caibarien up on the coast.  It used to be a sugar mill town but it isn't anything anymore.  Lots of  fabulous wooden houses.  We walk to a shop that has a stack of eggs but the man behind the counter shakes his head at us - this is one of the ration card shops.  In the plaza three old men are drinking beers.  A beer costs a dollar, one twentieth of the average salary.  There is a surprising amount of beer drunk in Cuba.  A bottle of cheap rum can be bought for less than a dollar.
We find a kiosk selling creme brulee.  They have been baked in the cut-off bottoms of beer cans.

Remedios

 Remedios is only ten kilometres inland but it has a nice centre and we decide to pause here for a few nights.  Small groups of tourists are bussed here from resort hotels during the day but in the evening it's peaceful.  The main plaza fills with people looking at their phones, calling relatives, friends, lovers or catching up on the intricate policy announcements and detailed development plans of the 39th National Assembly of the People's Committee. Yeah, right.  The new president is to be announced shortly.

Yes, but apart from the pork sandwiches and

the fried fish butties and

 

the caramel custard with hot chocolate, what

else is there to like about Remedios?

Sancti Spiritus is a bit of a grimy city with a central plaza surrounded by honking traffic.  We take a lovely room on the first floor of an old building in one corner and get a balcony from which we can watch the world go by.  Under one arcade is a supermarket selling plenty of kitchen and bathroom products, all imported, but not much food.  It is really busy all the time.  

early morning

Down by the river we find some restaurants overlooking the old bridge and splash out on a decent meal.  If we could find cooked food like this every evening we would probably cook less as it really isn't expensive.  However, we are paying for a room every night and if there's a kitchen we can't help but use it.  There are some nice streets away from the main plaza and down towards the river but the riverbank itself has been ignored - a shame really as it's a nice green spot.

the kitchen in our casa, Sancti Spiritus

the Carretera Central

methinks he doth protest too much

The flat ride to Las Tunas in the centre of the island is uneventful.  Well, apart from that fabulous pork butty.  We passed a kiosk beside a farm and noticed two or three trucks pulled over.  The drivers were all stood under the awning.  We had to stop just to see what was on offer - pork sandwiches as thick as your hand.  Salivating, we ordered two.  I think we lived off the memory of those sandwiches for some days after.  Las Tunas, it is noted in the Lonely Planet guide, is popular with Italian sex tourists.  That would explain the middle-aged and older paunchy men hanging out in the plazas.  Some were walking dogs.  The town does not feel worth more than a night, or is it just that we wish to distance ourselves from them.  The largest number of tourists to Cuba come from Canada.  This is possibly because Canada, especially during Pierre Trudeau's time, was supportive.  They stay mostly at the all-inclusive resorts on the north coast.  The second largest group of tourists is from Italy.  Presumably mostly male.

We have joined the Carretera Central once again.  The main highway through the country is quite busy here.  There's a mixture of traffic, plenty of rumbling trucks, and smoking buses, and not much width.  The landscape here is almost all farmland.  We break the journey in a small town where we find a casa mentioned in our guidebook.  It does not have a sign hanging up, and the woman who greets us doesn't bother with taking our passports to register with the local police, which is a normal procedure here.  We think she maybe lost her licence for breaching the rules.

an unusual avenue

barbed wire laundry

The casa we find in Camaguey the next day might be our favourite.  Purely by chance we knock on a door and the owner tells us she is full - and takes us to her brother's house two streets away.  We are admitted into a typical courtyard house that has been recently restored and repainted.  It's fabulous.  We stay three nights.  The lovely owner runs the place with his male partner.  They are 'chaperoned' by his eldery mum.  Camaguey is full of tight narrow streets full of these houses - it feels Moorish - like an Andalucian city transplanted here.

On the long boring road to Ciego de Avila we meet another cyclist, an Aussie called Manuel, going in our direction.  There's headwind and it's a drag, so we stop for breaks and chat a little.  But when we stop for lunch he is ahead of us and we lose him. We wander around the town centre after finding a room for the night in search of food.  We are finding the same foodstuffs in most places and our evening meal is often a variation of pasta with fresh tomatoes, onions and cheese.  Not much room for variation is there?  Penne rigatoni or spaghetti?  Funnily enough Las Tunas was the only place where we could not find any pasta - how we cursed the Italian sex tourists.  In the main plaza are groups of kids and teenagers all wearing rollerblades.  They race and play tag in the cool of the late afternoon.  It's a rare occasion to see a group of kids out playing like this.

Our hosts speak some English.  It turns out that they both worked at the big hotels just north of here on the Cays - an archipelago of islands developed for upmarket tourism.  After many years they gave up the long commute in the workers buses because they had a young family.  We decide to go north, but not to the Cays.