We got up relatively early and spent some time with our host, the older woman. She talked about her life and I think she used to be a teacher, but my Spanish is just not good enough. After expectantly waiting for breakfast for 20 minutes we finally pushed forward with what questions we could muster and discovered it was actually in the house next door. It turned out to be worth the wait – coffee, bread, butter, honey, fruits and a huge omelette. There was also someone who spoke English in the Casa – in addition to running a Casa he works for Flora y Fauna (the Cuban wildlife department) and gifted us each a Mariposa flower (Cuba’s national flower). He also organized a taxi for us to go to the place where we had to pick up our rental car. The taxi was a rather small and, of course, old car. Only one of our bags fitted into the trunk – the carry-on luggage went with us on the back seats and the second big bad squeezed in the front seat with… the driver’s assistant? Friend? In Cuba, who knows. If it works, don’t ask questions.
We made it to the rental car company in time (set time was 10 o’clock) to find out that we had to wait. Our car was there and ready, but the staff member present was not allowed to do the paperwork and had to wait for a colleague. At first he said he was an hour away, then changed it to 10 minutes after calling him, and in the end he took about 30 minutes, which is pretty decent for Cuba. Finally we got it all sorted, paid for insurance and the second driver, and started our trip.
Driving in Cuba is an adventure. You share the road with horse-carts, cyclists, bici-taxis, ox-carts, pedestrians and sometimes suicidal hitch-hikers and/or similarly suicidal roadside vendors. On top of that, the streets are very religious (yes, that’s a bad way of saying they’re holy). They are plenty wide enough, but in many parts the surface just sucks a lot. The first roadworks took me, and the bottom of the car, quite by surprise. Not so good. Not long after I relaxed on a nice clean (looking) stretch and BAM!, straight into a huge pothole that I just couldn’t avoid at the speed I was going. Ok, we were only an hour into our road trip. If we wanted the car to make it to Havana in one piece we would have to be a little more careful. Forget speeding in Cuba, even if you don’t run over a local selling sunflowers, the car just won’t survive. Neither are good options, especially considering that if a Cuban is injured by a foreigner in an accident then the foreigner will be restricted from leaving the country until the matter is resolved through the (rather slow) legal system.
We had planned to grab a couple of things at a supermarket a.k.a. little shop in Holguin before getting on the road, but as it turned out the rental place was on the side of the city we needed to leave from, plus we were already later getting under way than planned (with Cuba’s widely known worst road ahead of us) so we just got going with no supplies. Not the greatest thing to be driving 6 hours through 30 degree heat with nothing to drink, so we had to stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere to get something. Not familiar with how things work over here we tried a „Café“ in some small town or village (they all look the same it seems). Eliot got two cans of lemonade for 20 pesos which was something, though I would have preferred a big bottle of water which they didn’t have. Lesson learned – stock up well in the cities.
Most interesting, we quickly noticed that the country is very clean. A lot cleaner than Berlin. There is no rubbish on the streets, people seem to clean their houses at least once a day, and even the horse carts have some sort of bag under the bum of the horse to collect the horse shit. Despite having little means and a „third-world“ feeling in many respects, Cubans have both a high level of education and pride, both personal and national. One amusing side-effect of the „little means“ is the creative solutions for transportation, most notably the bikes. They look all a bit crazy, sort of handmade like someone found parts somewhere and put them together to create a bike. And that’s probably not far from the truth in many cases. So called „Franken-Bikes“.
We made it safely to Moa, the first bigger town on our way to Baracoa. Moa is an ugly city. The local industry is solely dedicated to the nickel mines and the whole area looks a bit post-apocalyptic. Dead and dark brown. We were happy to leave it behind us, even though the street between Moa and Baracoa is supposedly the worst in the whole country. Driving there is not so much fun (though in the end manageable, even in a tiny hatchback car, despite what some rental companies or travel agencies may have you believe). Even so simple holes in the street are the least of your concerns – for the most part you find yourself weaving back and forth across the road. finding patches of drivable road. Sometimes in gravel, sometimes mud, sometimes through roadworks in progress, sometimes through places that look like it never was a real street.
After getting through the worst of it, we finally reached the promised street-vendors who sold special Baracoan treats on the side of the road. It was 5 pm and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast so of course we stopped at the first we saw – an old guy that minutes later we suspected of having bought a few things from the stand up the road and just walked a bit closer to Moa to sell it at a mark-up. We bought half the things he had and of course grossly overpaid – he was pretty vague on the prices to begin with and as soon as he saw CUC (which Eliot had mixed up with his pesos – lesson learned) he wanted CUC instead of pesos. We got a rather uninteresting cookie, a big round thing with almonds encased in a honey shell that was really tasty and two Cucuruchos, an authentic Baracoan treat of sugar and coconut in a cone made out of a palm frond that was rather boring. In the end we paid 3 CUC when 1 CUC was probably more than generous, c’est la vie.
Not long before we finally reached Baracoa, we eventually we decided to take a hitch-hiker. It seems that in Cuba hitch-hiking is the most common form of public transportation. There are large groups of people at the end of every village trying to get a ride which until this point we had simply driven past despite our guilt at them waiting in the sun, whose hopes were dashed every time we drove past in our comfortable, air-conditioned car. Being really careful we took an unimposing looking teenage schoolgirl. We had hoped that maybe given her age she might even speak a little English, or that at least she might be able to help us find our Casa. Unfortunately she didn’t speak a word of English, was too shy to even try speaking any Spanish, and got out about 10 minutes before the actual city, so no help there.
In Baracoa we stopped by a couple of guys sitting in front of a restaurant to ask directions to our Casa and, more than just give directions, the guy sent a kid off to grab us a photocopied map of the city from inside and then showed us exactly what streets to take. Cubans definitely seem to be a helpful and friendly bunch.
Map in hand, we had no trouble finding Casa Tony, in Calle Republica Nr. 8. The Casa was very welcoming and we basically got our own little „house“ on the rooftop. It was a separate little building at the back of a terrace that had a sleeping room, a bathroom and some sort of small kitchen with cupboards, a sink and a fridge but nothing else. Of course we also had the rest of the entire rooftop terrace all to ourselves as well. Very nice. The whole family was super friendly and we immediately felt at home. Rafael, a friend of a friend back home in Germany, arrived five minutes after we finished bringing our luggage in. He lives in the same street, some three houses away (what a pleasant coincidence). We had had some email contact with him and he promised to show us around his home town and show us the ropes of life and travel Cuba. We arranged first to have dinner in the Casa and have Raphael stop by to pick us up after and head out for a Mojito or two.
It turned out to be a good option – food at Tony’s is more of a celebration than just a meal. The guests of course get the best the house has to offer. We got a big bowl of bread to go with soup for starters, a side salad each, a plate of fried banana slices off to the side, and after giving up halfway through the soup were presented with a platter of Marlin steaks in a spicy sauce and of course traditional rice and beans to go with it. I hadn’t tried Marlin before but Eliot was quick to order it as he knew it and liked it. I could tell why, Eliot likes really plain fish and indeed it was somehow closer to steak than a piece of fish but still very, very tasty. Despite being so full that we could barely move we were presented with an obligatory „dulce“ to top off the meal.
Stuffed as we were, Rafael picked us up to have a first tour through town. We saw some places, learned the basic layout of the city centre and had some drinks at a bar next to the central „park“. The Swiss-German couple who had the other room in the Casa happened past and joined us at out table for a drink as well and we all had a nice evening together. We came home relatively late and after all the impressions of the day I fell asleep immediately.