Steven’s Cuba Blog

Cuba Chronicles, Chapter Three

November 23, 2005 at 11:08 pm | In Trip Report |

LAUNCHPAD

Autopista between Havana and Matanzas, Thursday September 1st, 2005, 10am
I got off to a rocky start this morning - I had planned to be on the road by 8am, but I had some complications getting my sports bag and other equipment secured to my bike. The fact that I had to set everything up downstairs, outside in the morning mist (I wasn’t about to set up my bike upstairs and then carry it down or shoehorn it into the tiny elevator) didn’t help matter much either. I paid the casa owner, got on the bike, and rode up to the Malecon. I took my time and headed all the way east until the Paseo, then turned right onto to it until the Capitolio and the ramp onto the ciclobus - a conveniently gutted city bus used to ferry people with their bicycles to and from the Playas Del Este (the only other way to get across the Bay is the tunnel, and bicycles aren’t allowed there for safety reasons).

The bus ride costs a few cents, and it’s worth just about that. I ended up standing next to several other people, mostly men, some in work clothes, others in suits, all with bicycles, mopeds or small motorcycles balanced treacherously on the bus’s uneven floor. I was in a particularly awkward position, in the center of the bus with one arm steadying my overweight Marin mountain bicycle and the other trying to steady myself on the overhead hand grip. Every turn the bus took, I had to lock my arm so that I didn’t fall over my bike. This 15 minutes bus ride was almost as gnarly as the hours-long bike rides I would later undertake… in all fairness, though, my bike was horribly unbalanced with way too much weight on the back.

At the other side of the tunnel, we got off the ramp single file, and everyone went their separate way to work. I got on the right-most lane of the highway, reserved for bicycles, and started making my way to Matanzas. The highway is mostly straight with few hills, but there were a couple of forks where I had to stop and ask people which way to go. Everyone was immediately friendly and helpful - I didn’t get lost once anywhere in Cuba, mostly due to everyone’s approachability and willingness to help.

The excessive weight I was carrying quickly became apparent whenever I faced an uphill climb, even a very small one. I never had to resort to walking my bike, but I came pretty close a few times. I did make sure to build up a lot of speed on top gear before an uphill (my speedometer creeped over 50km/h several times), and I overcame a few of them en valseuse - standing up on my pedals.

It would become all too obvious that leaving as late as I did would make it very difficult for me - by 11:00am, the heat was nearing unbearable levels, and by 12:30pm it was painfully clear that I would have to stop until the sun started going down, whether I wanted to or not. I pulled into one of the tourist resto-stops at the side of the highway, ordered a soda and relaxed in the shade. I also took advantage of that time to ask for some tap water, and refill my 1.5L Ciego Montero bottle, adding some drops of purifier (Tap water is more or less safe around the city, but I have a history of bad luck while traveling, so I didn’t want to take a chance at the very start of my trip). At around 1:45pm, I got back on the road. I only stopped once more at 3pm to drink and water and relax in the shade near a big oil refinery with a Canadian flag flying high.

The scenery, needless to say, was quite breathtaking all the way from Havana to Matanzas. It starts off as your average, “Autoroute des Laurentides”-ish divided highway, but the crowded leafy trees and lampposts quickly give way to spectacular natural views just kilometers away from Havana. You’ve got the ocean and sandy beachy shores on your left (I was almost tempted to stop and jump into the waves on more than once occasion), and vast fields and hills just covered with Palm trees and all sorts of vegetation as far as the eye can see. There are many species of flora and fauna endemic to Cuba, so it’s no stretch of the imagination to say that you’ll only see sights like this in Cuba.

By the time I made it to Matanzas, a light rain had started so I had to stop and cover my equipment with my tarp and put my raincoat on. I had serious trouble getting my bearings in this city - there are two “parts” to the city separated by a huge bay (Matanzas is the 4th-busiest sugar port in the world), and as with several other Cuban cities (as I’d be loathe to discover), there are also two addressing schemes; the “old” one and the “new” one - names, and numbers.

My good luck invariably had me carrying contact addresses in one format while in reality the city still functioned on the other. I rode for a full 30 minutes through the unmarked suburban/rural sprawl of eastern Matanzas, searching for an address I wasn’t even sure was accurate, eventually realizing that I was going in circles.

Tired, soaked and with the sun disappearing past the horizon, I gave up, and approached a group of 8 young inked / pierced guys sitting on the curb in front of their house - something I would never do here, not out of fear, but out of embarrassment. I explained my situation to them, told them the address I was searching for, and asked if one of them would get on his bike and show me how to get there. The youngest one - Yanmay - volunteered, and soon we were on our way. Within 10 minutes we were at my casa. I thanked him, paid him some change (very little for me, but probably a couple weeks salary for him), and he offered to show me around the clubs and such while I was staying in Matanzas.

I spent the next few nights hanging out with him and his friends, and - as a sign of things to come - made my first real friend in Cuba (excluding people I already knew through work or the Internet). I made many more of what I call “friends” (I don’t use the term loosely) in Cuba these +/- 2 months than I have in the past year in Montreal.