Aug 23 Havana

Being tourists in Havana but also hearing the inside story of Cuban life today

Our last day and we walked around old Havana admiring the colonial architecture. We were taken to a tourist market where we could buy art ranging from African pieces to erotic lovelies. This was real Tourist tat, made to capture foreign currency and  I wondered why paint was available for workers to paint for tourists but there is none for the school children to use. We also visited National hotel a big art deco building. So many important people have stayed there that there is now a decade wise depiction of the film stars, musicians and more recently politicians who have stayed there.

Our guide Raimondo had allowed us to write down one question each about Cuba which he promised he would answer on the last day, our questions covered currency, censorship, travel, tourism teaching, buildings and health care and i wondered whether he would answer them or duck them.  I was surprised at his openness in answering many of the questions. A picture emerged of a Cuba that is sorely lacking in human rights and where people want the freedom to travel and communicate with others.

So i ended this holiday feeling that i had enjoyed being in Cuba, seeing the towns and the architecture, but i felt very uncomfortable about the lack of human rights and feel that i would not want to visit again until that improves. It was a rather downbeat note for coming home. I was also exhausted after our heavy programme of biking, seeing new sights and dancing and needed a weekend to recover.

Aug 22 Santa Clara to Havana

Cuban censorship and revolutionary fervour.

When i offered my week old Guardian to a man picking up a newspaper in the Spanish colonial town of Remedios i opened up a tale of isolation and repression. The man was an unemployed journalist with minimal access to the internet. He had a Spanish passport and had been to Barcelona last year, the ticket bought by friends there. He related how it would take him seven years of all his salary to buy a ticket. He also told me that a bartender in the tourist area earns more in a week than a doctor in a fortnight. I have noticed the absence of newspapers and magazines, also that no-one in Cuba is writing with pen and paper. Later our guide told us how the government censors all the news and uses secret police. Critics of the regime find themselves in prison. Many Cubans appear loyal to their country but they would still like to travel but cannot since the government controls all the passports.   

I think we have seen every revolutionary monument in Cuba. Our guide Raimondo was deeply committed to the revolution and its history. It reached its apotheosis today with our visit to the Che museum in Santa Clara. A key battle in the revolution was fought there when the revolutionaries captured an armoured car in 1958. The site has been nicely preserved with railway carriages displaying the battle and a new concrete sculpture integrated into it. Che was an attractive revolutionary but he has been sanctified in the museum there. The display about his life captures his early life, his revolutionary zeal, his militarism and internationalism in a respectful display, even the spurs he used as a guerrilla in the Cuban sierra maestra. A vast statue of Che is battle fatigues looks out on the countryside from atop the museum. Communism meets Catholicism with the beautification of St Che. I wonder what Che himself would have made of it.  Castro himself seems to avoid a personality cult, his birthday was barely noticed but he is in posters exhorting people to live up to the revolution.

Day 12: Camaguey

Rural Cuba, a fine community centre, and back to Camaguey and salsa. Beautiful day for a ride that started with a long descent. Our water stop was in a community shelter with poetic slogans such as "trenches full of ideas not stones".
We also stopped at a large community centre built in vernacular style the 1960s with Cuban American money and it housed a stage and dance room. Now all that was there was a dilapidated library. A rather poignant reminder of what could have been here.
We stopped in a bus station where people were crowding onto a primitive windowless people-carrier like something from the Third Reich. Many people are sitting around in the villages - evidence of under employment.
Ended the day dancing at an open air salsa bar where a plump moustachioed male voclaist serenaded us.

Day 10: Santiago churches and cemeteries

Day of churches, streets and cemeteries. We started the day visiting the Church of Our Lady of Cuba which was a vast airy church where the priest was celebrating mass. People came dressed in white and yellow and offered sunflowers and lit candles. It is a fusion of African and Catholic faiths aand the strength of devotion was touching. We then had a morning walking round Santiago where one sees every style of architeture,  highlights included a revolutionary monument made of a series of vast  metal rectangles set in the ground like a series of machete strokes. Then we walked around the streets with colonial style houses and Soviet style wiring. People were out in the squares relaxing . I explored an eccentric bookshop with books, rum bottles and notices all stacked up in an array. Santiago cemetery is a mass of white marble monuments and a large early 20 c mausoleum to Jose Marti who was the first Cuban nationalist. He looks down benevolently but every half half hour there is a changing of the guard and three young Cuban soldiers goose step out to change. It felt too militaristic for me and contrasted with the peace inside his tomb . The Bacardi family also have a very showy black memorial.  We then bussed up to the north of th island. 

Day 9: mountains to Santiago

A day of experiencing Cuban resourcefulness and then the salsa in Santiago We walked through the forest in the morning visiting small homesteads and farms growing cocoa and avocados. Life is quite remote up there and everyone travels on foot or by mule. One of our party almost collapsed on the walk through dehydration. She had drunk a litre of mojitos the previous night. So one of the other women, Maggie walked between us for half an hour until we reached a home. Here the midwife was visiting because there was a 3-day old baby. Here we revived Jane and the men made a hammock and carried her down to the hotel at an amazing pace, that is their ambulance!  I was touched by their kindness and resourcefulness,

We had a fine afternoon ride across rolling countryside and then a wonderful 4km downhill ride to Santiago. Spent the evening hearing an excellent salsa band at a famous bar with a balcony on the street  and the female  vocalist sang like Amy Winehouse. Ended the evening with drinks on the 15 th floor bar at our hotel. What contrasts in that day.

Day 8: Banoa to the mountains El Solton

Today's ride was one of the toughest 60 km and with mountain climbs at the end. We had our food and water stops in small squares. One was hosting a sports day and kids played volleyball, the kit was minimal and I saw worn out boxing gloves and shuttlecocks made of maize cobs. There were several chess games being played . Public toilets here are less than pristine so our guide Raimondo arranges toilet stops every 20 km and it is a chance to see inside a Cuban home. Today's home was quite well off with pictures of Claudia Schiffer, the Cuban virgin and a cartoon about ozone depletion so touching on beauty, religion and politics. 

We stayed in a beautiful mountain hotel resort in huts clustered in the tropical rain forest beside a huge natural pool. The barman also made generous mojitos and we shared life stories and internet dating experiences.

Day 7: Camaguey to Banoa

A day for enjoying Cuban sculpture. In the morning we went round Camaguey in bicci taxis. Camaguey is a lively city with cyclists buzzing around and lively people. We had a city tour perched in bicci taxis after seeing churches we saw a artist's gallery. She did paintings and ceramic work featuring womens heads. In the afternoon I did not bike but went in the coach chilling out and catching up on my thoughts. Flat countryside with rice paddy fields. The afternoon ended with a violent tropical storm with lightening bolts coming down all around us. We stayed right on the square in Banoa  with the noisiest of starlings. After supper we  found a street full of zany street sculptures and a book shop. The cities in this western part of Cuba feel intelectually livelier.