From Santiago we were heading to our last stop, Baracoa. It’s a small town, right on the very end of the eastern side of the island. It is where Christopher Columbus landed when he reached the island for the first time and so was the first “city” (I use the term loosely) founded by the Spanish and Cuba’s first capital.
It lies 4 hours from Santiago by car but the road up through the mountains and down into the town is known as Cuba’s most perilous – and Cuba doesn’t exactly have a reputation for road safety in general. In fact, the town of Baracoa was, until the 1960s, only accessible by boat it is so hard to reach.
So, looking forward to what was sure to be, at very least, an interesting journey, we found some guys with cars who would be willing to drive us there and loaded our stuff into the vehicles. One of the cars was a 4 by 4 open sided jeep thing which looked the part and seemed as if it may not fare too badly on the treacherous road to Baracoa (which for large stretches is just dirt track with a smattering of jagged stones). The other car, however, was one of Cuba’s famous 50s cars in an amazing bright sky blue. Beautiful to look at, but I was slightly concerned about its roadworthiness. Like so many of the old cars in Cuba, it showed the signs of over 60 years of hard work. The one-time soft interior lining had completely disappeared (as is standard) and the metal inside of the car was just simply the other side of the metal outside of the car – literally like travelling in a tin can as the phrase goes. As you can imagine, I ended up in the old car with the dubious MOT history. At least it would make for some cool photos – you can’t get much more of a Cuban experience than travelling through the tropical scenery in an awesome vintage car, Cuban music blaring and friends by your side.
Inside our vintage taxi – a genuine Ferrari (!?)
Our luggage was loaded on to the roof of the 4 by 4 van but somehow I ended up holding on to mine and it came in the blue car with us. We set off on the journey, expecting to arrive in Baracoa before dinner time. We would have gladly spent a bit more time in Santiago but everyone said that the road had a bad reputation for safety, so it was better to use up part of the day and get there safely than to risk travelling at night.
The jeep taxi
We were all chatting in the car and playing music over the mp3 speaker system – one of the ironies of these cars is that, yes, they may be missing a door handle here or there, have no glass in the windows and in parts be held together with little more than duck tape, but at the same time, somehow they have got boombox speaker systems, mp3 docks and we even saw one once with a little TV in the front blaring reguetón music videos. I guess nowadays it’s easier to get your hands on a cheap Chinese mp3 player connection than on a specific piece for a vintage car which is probably only made in the US.
The scenery in Guantánamo province
Our sing-along was interrupted however when, with a thud, one of the bags came flying off the roof into the middle of the motorway (don’t worry there aren’t many cars on Cuban roads) and Faye said reluctantly that it was hers. I think she held onto it after that. Anyway, we carried on, coming to a sign that said, “WARNING! ROAD IN DISREPAIR”. While this statement could quite easily be applied to most roads in Cuba by our standards, I suppose it’s all relative.
One of the “Road in state of disrepair” signs that are quite common in rural Cuba
About an hour into our journey, we got our first puncture. And when I say we, I actually mean not the old 50s car, but the 4 by 4 jeep contraption. We pulled over on the side of the motorway while the drivers sorted out the spare. I took a few photos, including one of every piece of traffic that went past while we stood there – namely, a man on a bike and a horse drawn cart. Eventually we got back in the cars and headed off again. We were coming up to Guantánamo by this point which is on the road between Santiago and Baracoa. It is famous for two things, the well known Cuban folk song “Guantanamera” (the girl from Guantánamo) and the American military base which sits across the mouth of the bay.
Puncture #1
Watch out! Cuban motorway traffic.
The cars went through a couple of checkpoints on the road, which are not uncommon in any area of Cuba, but they seemed to be looking at our IDs a bit more carefully than usual. The base is a bit of a sore point in Cuba. Signed in 1903 the Cuban-American Treaty was one of the preconditions for the removal of American troops from Cuba after the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Americans had stepped in on the Cuban War of Independence from Spain after creating a pretext for intervention by allegedly bombing one of their own ships which was sitting in the Bay of Havana. By evicting the Spanish, they hoped to become the new dominating force on the island – and they were until the 1959 Revolution, which itself was partially a reaction to American influence on the island. The Cuban-American Treaty allowed for the perpetual leasing of an area of 120km2 (45 square miles) across the entrance to the bay of Guantánamo for use as a naval and coaling base. The Cubans control the part of the horseshoe shaped bay that lies more inland and the Americans control the land and waters that sit at the mouth of the bay. Cuba’s government claims the treaty is invalid since it was signed under duress and that the current use of the base, including its use as a military prison for high security terrorism suspects, contravenes the original terms. The US however reportedly still sends a cheque for $4000 rent every year, and every year the Cuban government refuses to cash the cheques. Apparently a cheque was once cashed by mistake but that was the only one. Still, $4000 doesn’t sound like a lot to me. I’m paying about £2000 a year for a room of just a few square metres at uni…
Anyway, as we approached the town of Guantánamo, you could see that things were a little tenser. The drivers said you weren’t allowed to stop or pull over at any point along the road we were on, and the sprawling open countryside to our left and right was replaced by a high wall of thorny cacti intertwined with a high metal fence on one side. We were all joking about how we could murder a Big Mac, since Guantánamo Naval Base reportedly contains the only McDonalds in Cuba (the island is one of the few places the the Golden Arches haven’t made it to yet), when the unbelievable happened. The 4 by 4 got another puncture and we were forced to pull over on the side of the road. We were all just laughing and joking as we got out the car, “here we go again”, but the drivers seemed tense. We were walking along the side picking up tamarinds (little pod shaped fruits which are unbelievably sour) which had fallen from the trees lining the road, but they told us not to walk past the end of either of the cars. Before long, two police cars showed up and were asking what was going on. We all had to show our ID. They were reasonably friendly but insistent that we could not stop here given the security situation regarding the base. The drivers explained that this was our second puncture, so we had no spare tyre, and so we were told to drive on to this little village and to wait there while a new tyre was sourced.
A few buildings in the village. I think this was the train station.
A train arrives
We arrived at the “little village”, which was literally a dirt road, a train track, about 4 houses, lots of goats and dogs and some locals. There were a couple of big signs in red saying “RESTRICTED AREA” and we were initially told not to get out the car and definitely not to take photos. We didn’t really know exactly where we where. In fact we didn’t really know a lot about anything. What was going on. How long we were going to be there. The drivers told us we were in a village in or near Boqueron, which was the largest place marked on the map in our guidebook and lies under a kilometre from the fence surrounding the American base. I think we might have actually been in a little hamlet called Glorieta, which lies further round the bay and not quite as near the boundary – about 7km away – but I can’t be sure. In and amongst the villagers were some soldiers with guns, but they looked more like local guys that had been asked to help protect the area than elite soldiers that had been stationed there specifically.
The view from outside the car while we were parked waiting for a tyre
It is in situations like this that Cuba really comes into its own. We were stuck, in the middle of nowhere, with no tyre, no phones (and, on that point, no one to call) and it was about 4 in the afternoon, so the end of the working day. In other places you would have to stop the night or find another car (but in these parts that’s not really an option). However, as I have mentioned before, in Cuba there is always someone who knows someone – it’s just a matter of finding them. The process had been put into action and I don’t know who but someone was phoning someone to get them to speak to someone to ask around for us….
Sitting waiting in the car for the new tyre
Eventually things like needing a wee took over and so we tentatively made our way out the cars. We didn’t stray far, but we wandered around the cars, and went to the bushes to relieve ourselves. The people in the village obviously didn’t get many/any non Cubans round their way because we seemed to be a bit of a spectacle, though they didn’t really talk to us. Later on we watched as the children went down to play in the waters of Guantánamo Bay, a mother carrying her baby, with bright orange armbands, on her hip. I was sure they knew about the American base just a mile or so away, but I wondered if they were aware of its notoriety in our press as a place of torture and imprisonment without trial. It was also strange to think that at least 4 people from my hometown have been held there – rightly or wrongly I do not know. I wondered whether there’d ever been any British people this close to the base (on the Cuban side) before? It was not exactly a tourist hot spot, and as the signs said, it was a restricted military area. I did managed to sneak a few photos though since the guards didn’t seem to be paying so much attention after all the time we’d spent hanging around waiting.
Down by the water looking towards the American base
Some local Cubans going down to the water to swim
After over 3 hours of waiting, waiting waiting, and constantly being told to be “tranquilo” (we were still worried about the nail biting journey round hair pin bends up through the mountains, which would now have to be undertaken in the dark) by the drivers because it ‘wouldn’t be long’ – which after 4 months in Cuba you come to learn that it means it could be minutes or it could be days – we were all getting fed up and hungry, having no food except a few soda crackers with us. But then out of the blue a man appeared at the end of the road wheeling a new tyre towards the car. I was happy to get on the move again but it was nice to have seen a different, more human, side to a place whose name you normally associate with hell on earth. Many people I’ve spoken to weren’t even aware that Guantánamo Bay was in Cuba in the first place – the military base dominates everyone’s idea of the word “Guantánamo” to such an extent that it becomes detached from its surroundings. It’s not just a military prison, there is an actual bay and a town with beautiful scenery and real people living there!
Our saviour appears on the horizon
We were all relieved and excited and happy to get on our way again. We continued on to Baracoa, going through the mountains in the dark. It’s a shame we didn’t have any light because the little of the view that we could see looked like it would be stunning in the daytime. We stopped at a little kiosk on the mountain road which sold supermarket basics to try and get some food, but all they had was more soda crackers, ketchup and tins of guava jam. We eventually reached Baracoa late at night, but luckily had arranged accommodation in advance, so there was not too much of a panic when we got there. The son of the man who owned the house we stayed in was visiting with his family for a break and I got talking to him a couple of days later. He told me he was the air traffic controller at Guantánamo airport and that it’s quite a responsible and tense job. Things are so off between Cuba and the US that if a Cuban plane strays into US aerial territory, it will get shot down and visa versa. Additionally, he told me that Cuba’s elite students who get to take International Relations postgrad courses (i.e. the country’s future ambassadors) don’t study in Havana, they study in Guantánamo, given the real life international relations case-study they’ve got going on down there. Talk about being dropped in at the deep end. His English astounded me – it was so good, but he’s never even had the chance to leave the island to practice. That must be difficult for someone that spends his day looking out the windows at planes flying off to far flung places. He told me his dad’s guesthouse has lots of repeat visitors that he now knows well and they will often bring him a newspaper or a magazine in English to help him practice. I think he said Time Magazine was his favourite.
Part of the village
I love it when things like this little escapade happen though. You could never have got to see somewhere like that if you’d tried to plan it. We got to see a part of Cuba that tourists, and even most Cubans, never get to see. I should now never be stuck again for something to say when they ask one of those really annoying questions at group introductions like, “Tell us an interesting fact about yourself!”. “I’ve been to Guantánamo Bay!” should do it from now on. I’ve also learnt never to judge a book by its cover, because that blue 50s vintage car made it all the way to Baracoa without as much as stalling once.
Waiting by the cars
Back on the road again
Baracoa’s calling
Thanks to Imahn for a couple of photos.
Blog: Alex in Cuba 
Excellent post. I will be experiencing many of these issues as well..