Havana to Cabanas
45 Miles
In a cool, clean garage surrounded by several bikes, panniers and a series of racks stands Abel. He is a well-spoken, good looking man that has been running the CycloCuba bicycle rental business for many years in Havana.
Truth be told, I was immediately smitten with him and brought up that fact that I run a similar business in Maine called Lighthouse Bikes; Tours, Rentals and Repairs. After a bit of small talk, Abel got right to it.
“It is terrible here,” said Abel. “We have had three sets of customers this entire winter, one in December, one in January and one in February. It isn’t me that I worry about, it is my employees. I can’t pay them if we have no customers. We used to be booked all winter.”
I naively tell him that when Trumps term ends in just three years, maybe things can start to get better. He looked at me despondently, “We won’t make it through another year.”
He quickly readied a bike for my friend and told us to bring it back any day and time and he will be happy to come in from home to receive it. “If there is work, I will always work.”
Once the bike was fully equipped and ready to go, we headed west down the coast, bouncing over potholes, sprinting through the smoke from roadside grass fires, and taking a dip in the Caribbean before ending up in the small town of Cabanas.
Here a group of children crowded around us and helped push our bikes up the last incline to our Casa begging for a few pesos in return. When our little parade arrived, our host and her family burst out from their yard and surrounded us as well, everyone in the group smiling and laughing about our arrival and the business they were about to receive.
Our welcome was warm and chaotic. “We have only had a few customers this year. Can we feed you dinner? Breakfast? Would you like a beer?”, they asked us in quick succession while our bikes were swept out of our hands and taken to a locked room and our panniers carried to bedrooms.
For dinner we were served whole fried fish, yucca, tostones, bean soup, salad, rice and filtered water and beer. When we were finished, the hosts sat with us and arranged for Casa Particulares in the next two towns, calling friends and relations to tell them we were coming. Each phone call was met with celebration; the sounds of enthusiastic voices trumpeting out of the receiver upon hearing the news that tourists, one of the few dwindling streams of income left, were coming.
