Vinales II

It's amazing how quickly views and events become commonplace and slip through your consciousness. Today we drove to the north coast and the Gulf of Mexico by taxi. It's 60km and we could have taken a tour bus, but I hate being herded on and off and at every stop there's the 'destination' cafe, restaurant, souvenirs, viewpoint, etc, and you can only go the chosen route and stop at the chosen stopping places. God I hate it, but Cuba is totally geared up for it and the only alternative is the local bus which is basically a converted cattle truck and goes everywhere and you may get there eventually . . . or there is a local taxi. This one was an old Lada with a tiny engine but well cared for by the cheerful local driver Gordano.

We went over the mountains through the heart of this rural area and soon horses pulling buggies and carts and the cowboys on their rather fine small Spanish horses became the norm and after awhile you take them for granted and forget how unique this all is. Coffee, sugar cane, fruit and veggie fields stream past the window and only the occasional car or truck on the road. After an hour we pull into the hilltop town of Minas de Matahambre. Gordano bought us a cup of coffee from a small kiosk - an unusual act in my experience of being a tourist, but he was being thoughtful as he knew we only carried CUCs, the money used by tourists, whereas the coffee was 5 CUPs, the local peso. With one CUP worth around a tenth of the value of a CUC the coffee cost around 5p. We sat in the shade drinking our strong, sugary coffees which were poured into small glasses  from a flask and watched the town go about its business. This was our first experience of a genuine, untouched by tourism, Cuban town, which made me realise how tourism driven Cuba has become. It was peaceful and busy, quiet but full of the sounds of activity, distant hammering, people calling out, a vehicle climbing the hill across the the valley, there were probably horses, goats and cattle making horse, goat and cattle noises as well. We sat taking it all in, before it was back in the Lada and  on the road again.

Ahh the roads..... Cuban roads are hard to describe in full. In Havana I stood in wonder about to cross a busy road when I noticed a manhole cover in the middle of the road. The road surface around it had broken free and the entire thing had dropped about a foot and was tilted to one side creating a foot deep and 2 foot wide hole - in the middle of the road! Miraculously the traffic weaved it's way around the hole as everyone seemed to know it was there. 

Driving on the roads outside Havana is similar but probably not as extreme. A good smooth road can change character in moment with massive hollows and mounds of bitumen as if it suddenly turned to mud at some point and a huge lorry drove through it. Apparently this is what happens in the summer when the high temperatures melt the road and trucks gradually squash the surface. 

The 60km journey to the north shore took us over 2 hours, but we swam in the Gulf of Mexico, drank coconut milk and lazed and chatted in a beach induced mellowness until it was time for the 2 hour drive home.