Big holiday adventures are always imagined as tough excursions through the jungle stumbling over danger and unknown animal species ready to bite or eat you on every step, high risk sports on some remote part of the world or blah blah... Instead, I say, why not just try to do a most usual thing like drive around meeting the locals and the places in a country like Cuba ? Oh yeah...
Our plan was to experience Cuba as cubans: arrive by plane in Havana , get the train to Santiago de Cuba (very few cubans dare to take the train we learned later) and then drive around staying in people's houses (rented rooms) until getting back to Havana where we would stay the last 3 days of the trip (and from where we would still visit Pinar del Rio on the most west part of the country).
As you can see in our road map we actually managed to do just that
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| Caminho que fizemos de carro (comecando e acabando em Havana) Our road trip through Cuba (starting and finishing in Habana) click on image |
The problem was that nothing else really went according to plan...
There are several advices common to most guides to Cuba:
We basically did all of these, mostly involuntary yes but things like give lifts or not drink from the mains are just rubish. Not give lifts is just impossible unless you are bastard with a heart of stone, there are no public transports and very few vehicls in Cuba so everyone hitchikes the few cars available, how can you pass again and again people under the crazy sun in the motorway without stopping?
So we gave endless lifts, the backseat of the car smelled like bananas, cows , peasants and a multitude of strange things in the end.
And we had endless conversations with real people and incredibly touching interactions with people amazed and grateful of lifts by tourists. I got kisses and hugs all the time. After a while I started taking photos, and these are some of those with whom we shared our car:
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| My partner of adventure - Alex - not 1 word of spanish and a russian boy (we had no idea if cubans loved or hated russians these days, it turned out, to my surprise, that they are seen as THE big friends ) |
There are several advices common to most guides to Cuba:
- don't drink the water unless is bottled and properly closed
- don't eat outside of hotels
- don't get mixed up with the police
- and even less crime
- don't give lifts if you rent the car
- don't drive after dark
- DON't give lifts after dark
- blah blah blah.
We basically did all of these, mostly involuntary yes but things like give lifts or not drink from the mains are just rubish. Not give lifts is just impossible unless you are bastard with a heart of stone, there are no public transports and very few vehicls in Cuba so everyone hitchikes the few cars available, how can you pass again and again people under the crazy sun in the motorway without stopping?
So we gave endless lifts, the backseat of the car smelled like bananas, cows , peasants and a multitude of strange things in the end.
And we had endless conversations with real people and incredibly touching interactions with people amazed and grateful of lifts by tourists. I got kisses and hugs all the time. After a while I started taking photos, and these are some of those with whom we shared our car:
