Jeff and Joanne's trip to Cuba, February 2005

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ADVENTURE TO CIENFEUGOS

Jeff's sense of direction is better than mine, but getting out of the city of Havana was an adventure all on its own. A foreign country, a foreign language, and only a vague map of the entire country fit onto one page made for a 2 hour loop-de-loop around the city. 2 hours! We finally pulled over at what appeared to be a bus stop - numerous Cubans were mulling around on the side of one of the busier roads we had ended up on.

We pulled over and motioned for the first brave soul to come over to our vehicle so we could ask directions. He could not understand what we were asking, so a woman came over to help out. We pointed to Cienfeugos on the map, and all the folks at the bus stop starting yelling and pointing in various directions. Didn't any of them know the way? Finally the guy that had come over to us drew a map for us on our note pad, complete with arrows, train tracks, and words like "via blanca", "intemitente", "puerto", and "autopista". He also wrote out the kilometres: 15 km to the puerto, 10 km past what looked like 4 bridges... were those puertos? (and he made sure to count those out for us, drawing attention to the 4th one)...then an arrow around (perhaps an underpass?) and 265km along "aguado" to Cienfeugos. Oh my god - we were never going to figure this out!

Finally one of the women offered to ride with us part way, to help give us directions and save her the bus fare. Wonderful! Our hand-made map turned out to be pretty close, but we had anticipated busy highways and were actually travelling down a single-lane back road with nothing but open fields and fences. When we came to a stop sign, she hopped out and ran into what looked like a restaurant, and in jumped another woman, who motioned forward and said "Cienfeugos". What was this, a travelling road show? A chance for the Cubans to all hitch a free ride with a couple of white suckers? Well, at least we were heading in the right direction.

We eventually dropped off our last passenger, who gave us directions that were against our trusty hand-drawn map. We debated about which direction to go, and opted for her choice...since she lives around here, she must know the way! An hour later, and caught in an intersection in a town we couldn't see on the map, we stopped again to ask for directions, and a young man offered to show us the way if we offered him a ride. We agreed, and suddenly as he was getting into the tracker, he yelled at his friend across the street to hop in too! I at this point was nearing the end of my patience after 4 hours of this, and said no - no more hitchhikers! No way! The other young man came running over, and in the midst of my yelling "no more!" he said "hello" to me. He speaks English! Yahoo! Needless to say, we thought we'd hit the hitchhiker jackpot and told him to get in. Finally we could get some understandable info!

The "Autopista" to Cienfuegos.

Robert and his Cuban friend drove with us for about an hour, getting us much further along on our journey, and chatting with us the whole time. At one point, I thought Robert's friend was acting strangely - he had been fairly quiet for some time, and then sat forward on seat, blocking Robert from our view, and his behaviour became quite animated as he told a story all in spanish. I was nervous - what was going on? Were they doing something to our backpacks? Were they planning something? But I relaxed after Robert made eye contact with me in the mirror and I saw our backpacks were still there and he wasn't up to anything more than sitting back enjoying the breeze.

All of  a sudden Robert and his friend both wanted out of the car. Jeff pulled over, and the 2 guys jumped out, said this was their stop - they lived just over the hill - and shook our hands goodbye. Robert even went so far as to kiss my cheek politely. Seemed like a pretty nice guy, and I felt slightly guilty about not wanting to give them a ride earlier in the day.

Smoke coming from a field at sunset - we saw many smokey areas along the way to Cienfeugos and weren't sure if this was a contolled fire, or wild burning of palm trees, or burning oil lines.

We finally got to Cienfeugos around 10pm that night. What had started out as a "3 hour tour" ended up as an all-day event in Cuban traffic control. Or was that self control. Jeff had done most of the driving, although I took a 2 hour shift once it was dark out. The sun sets around 7pm in Cuba, and we were nervous driving the highway in the dark, so were glad to finally come across signs for Cienfeugos.

We drove through the city quickly - it was dark but had some streetlights. It didn't appear to be very big, and after about half an hour we found a casa to stay in for the night for $30. The room wasn't nearly as posh as Marta and Jose's (was that just last night? Wow, this had been a really long day!) but had a private bathroom with a shower, 2 beds, a fridge, a lock on the door, and seemed relatively clean. I was puzzled about bags of what appeared to be chicken parts in the freezer, but was too tired to think about it more than 5 seconds, and got ready to turn in for the night.

DAY 4

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