Javi the cabbie is a happy chappie. It’s only 2pm, but my ride to Havana
airport is his final job of the day, then he’s off for a “siesta” at his
girlfriend’s house. And next week his holiday begins.
“All taxis here belong to the government,” he says. “I’ve worked 25 years as a
driver, so every summer Señor Fidel pays for me to have a week at the beach,
me and my family – children, grandchildren, everyone...”
“And your girlfriend?” “Oh no.” He cracks a grin. “I take my wife.” Taxi
drivers the world over have told me their life stories, but rarely have they
been better value than Javi. None has ever stopped his cab and opened the
boot to fetch the family album, so that I can look at his photos of
grandkids, pets and mistresses.
He is so hospitable, in fact, that I decide I might risk a question about the
febrile state of Cuban politics. What does he make of Raul Castro, pretender
to his brother’s presidential throne? Will he bring change?
“He is tougher.” That grin again. Javi turns towards me and shapes his hand
like a pistol. “You disagree with him? Bang bang.”
My cab ride with Javi comes at the end of my road trip around Cuba, and it’s
typical of the jolly encounters I’ve had here. There was Dominga, at the
record shop in Cienfuegos, who not only advised me which salsa albums to
buy, but played snatches of them, shaking her booty extravagantly to
demonstrate their rhythmic appeal. There was Jorge, the bici-taxi driver in
Trinidad, who refused to cycle me to the restaurant I requested, and instead
took me to his own favourite – possibly run by his aunt. It was the best
meal I ate in Cuba. And there was Luis, the inebriated gentleman in the Che
Guevara T-shirt, who insisted I dance with his missus, then bought me a
mojito when I trod on her toe.
I bumped into Luis (and stamped on his wife) at the very beginning of my trip.
I’d dropped off my bags at Hotel Saratoga, wandered out towards Havana’s Old
Town, and dipped into the first bar I found for some jetlag-busting
refreshment.
Inside, a quartet of girl singers in turquoise halternecks swayed to the beat
of their shrunken guitars and reedy flutes. Bow-tied waiters squashed mint
into mojitos and clinked ice into daiquiris, and a toothless crone peered
through the saloon-like window slats from the street, moving her gums with
the music. The bar was scruffy. It had no discernible name, and despite
being on Obispo, the main drag, no discernible tourists. All I know is that
within an hour of arriving in Cuba, and without even trying very hard, I was
dancing with the locals.
That’s the thing about Havana – it really lives up to its postcard. The
collapsing colonial palaces in pastel colours; the sultry women toting
cigars as fat as your forearm; the vintage 1950s Cadillacs that cruise
around town, their tropical bodywork concealing Lada engines, a motorised
metaphor for the phut-phut Cuban economy. It looks exactly as you hoped it
would.
Havana never disappoints, so perhaps it’s not surprising that most visitors
venture no further. But I am also keen to see the back-country Cuba that
tourism has barely scratched: Cienfuegos, on the south coast, where Graham
Greene went to sip sundowners and gaze at seagulls; and Santa Clara, in the
island’s midriff, where Comrade Che seized the country by derailing an
artillery train with his army of farmhands and students.
I rent my wheels from Ray, a warm man in a coach-driver’s blazer, who inquires
after my sons (I don’t have any) and seems genuinely worried about my
chances of making it across the Escambray Mountains in his dog-tired Peugeot
206.
Luckily, the four-hour drive to Cienfuegos on the A1 is untaxing. Cuba’s only
serious highway runs from end to end of the island, six wide lanes of
mesmerising emptiness, sometimes pockmarked and gritty, sometimes smooth and
solvent, melting into watery heat-haze. Few people outside Havana have cars.
Occasionally, a horse and cart bent down with sugar cane sags by in the
wrong carriageway, or a vulture-shaped silhouette swims across the road.
Things liven up once I turn south into the waterlands of Cienfuegos province.
Here, ploughmen glance up from their oxen to wave at my car, and horseback
cattlemen, shirtless and sinewy, doff their stetsons. Every so often I
judder through a spaghetti-western village lined with low-slung pink and
peach houses – camp cowboy towns that look like Dodge City after a tart-up
on a TV makeover show.
Cienfuegos city comes as a sophisticated surprise. Set beside a still, blue
bay, it has Parque José Marti, an Italianate square surrounded by garish
bell towers and colonnades and domes; and the Malecon, a seafront boulevard
with palm-pricked parks, sun-speared villas and promenading couples, arm in
arm.
It’s a seductive place, and I can’t remember whiling away an evening at such a
lilting pace for ages. I begin with cocktails in the courtyard of the Tomas
Terry Theatre, then slink along the Prado, where preening youths and their
glammed-up girlfriends parade for each other in the lantern light. I queue
at the Coppelia ice-cream parlour for a dollop of the coconutty cold stuff
the locals live on; then clatter along the Malecon aboard a horse-drawn
tram, hoping we don’t catch fire from the tin-can brazier blazing underneath
as a tail-light.
The highlight, though, is joining the people in the moonlit bandstand on
Parque José Marti for impromptu karaoke, accompanied by a trio playing
guitar, guiro and teaches tom-toms. Apart from me, it’s an all-Cuban crowd –
the young women gripping rum bottles between their knees, the old men
punching their hearts to the rhythm.
My time in Trinidad feels a bit orchestrated by comparison. An hour’s drive
east from Cienfuegos, this is Cuba’s cutest colonial outpost, and its
cobbled heritage quarter is very much on the backpacker beat. Sacked by
pirates, rebuilt by slaves, it has a handicraft market in every alleyway and
infectious music tumbling from every door. Outside the cathedral you can
take a photo of an old man’s ass for half a peso.
It is a town that requires little guidebook reading: you can’t miss the party.
But even here, natives and newcomers mingle unselfconsciously. My favourite
hangout is the grape-draped courtyard at Casa de la Trova, where a wizened
lothario in Daz-white slacks, shirt and cap invites a succession of bashful
young women from England up to salsa, whether their boyfriends like it or
not.
What you do need in Trinidad, like everywhere else in Cuba, is a heads-up
about where to eat. And, like elsewhere, the paladars – spare-room
eateries in family homes – have the edge over the state-run restaurants.
Enter Jorge the bici-taxi driver. He insists on pedalling me to Estela’s,
where a rap at a shadowy door wins admittance to the parlour of a stuccoed
Spanish townhouse, and for £5 I scoff nine platefuls of creole chicken,
fried pork and chilli-laced greens, under the anguished gaze of an
especially gruesome pieta. Divine.
By law, paladars are allowed only 12 covers; Estela has more like 32, which
may explain the furtive nature of her business. Indeed, Trinidad is a good
place to observe the economic contradictions of a country caught between its
flickering Marxist dream and the rapacious tide of tourism.
Nobody I meet is prepared to criticise the Castro regime, and most Cubans seem
expert at having a good time, but in a country where hotel porters now make
more than doctors and each “convertible” tourist peso is worth 28 of the
local variety, everyone’s after your buck. This even includes the matronly
curator at the Museo Romantico, who ushers me discreetly into a side room to
offer a swag of her black-market embroidery – three convertible pesos,
please.
Which brings me to Santa Clara, last stop on my tour, reached via a
scintillating drive across the jungly serrations of the Escambray Mountains.
This is a sociable town, famed as the fountainhead of the revolution, where
toddlers take pleasure rides in goat-pulled wagons outside the Hotel Santa
Clara Libre, still scarred with gunshot from the guerrilla attack that
clinched the 1958 war.
That attack was led by the great Guevara, whose statue casts a 100ft shadow
over Santa Clara from its plinth above the Plaza de la Revolucion, and
embodies the complex contradictions around his cult. The freedom-bringing
hero stands in trademark combat gear, body armoured with machetes and
grenades, overlooking a Stalinesque square that was built to fête him but
now serves as a vast, parched coach-park unloading Germans, Canadians and
Brits in Che shirts and caps.
There is a bunker-like museum here, too – and it’s a gripping study in
Socialist celebrity, lined with glossy, Magnum-style photographs of Che the
medical student, Che the mountain climber, Che the golfer – even Che kissing
a baby. And you think: boy, did that guy have an eye for a photo op.
As I wander around, dodging the gaze of a museum steward suspicious of my
notebook, I wonder what Guevara would make of his modern status as tourist
icon and all-purpose fashion accessory. More importantly, what would he make
of a nation that has been 50 years without democracy, and hands out free
holidays at the point of a gun?
Travel details: you need three nights’ confirmed lodging before
travelling to Cuba, so unless you’re feeling especially intrepid, the best
way to plan a fly-drive is through a specialist operator such as Voyager
(01580 766222, www.voyagercuba.co.uk
). A 10-night tailor-made trip in February, taking in Havana, Cienfuegos,
Trinidad and Santa Clara, costs £994pp, including Virgin Atlantic flights
from Gatwick, visa, car hire and B&B in good hotels.
Other operators to try include Audley Travel (01993 838600, www.audleytravel.com
), Regent Holidays (0845 227 3305, www.regent-holidays.co.uk
) and Journey Latin America (020 8747 8315, www.journeylatinamerica.com
).
