Sailing the San Blas to South America

 

 

Wildcard

 

So, although the Americas is one continuous land from Alaska to the south of Chile, the road stops in southern Panama and begins again past the Colombian border. The Darien Gap for what ever reason - political or environmental, separates Central and South America and for us means I need to find an alternative to road travel, an expensive alternative to get Sixto across to Colombia and free reign into South America. There's no ferries that run the route and I didn't want to put Sixto on a plane and meet him at a Colombian airport days later so I decided on finding a sailboat that would take us both. The most reputed sailboat was booked out by a private group so I settled on the Wildcard, the NZ captain had been doing the route for years and had experience with motorbikes on board. I made it to the harbour, near the port town of Portobello which the Spanish used to transport a lot of the treasures found in Peru further up the Americas. I met the crew on the afternoon we were to set sail and together with Wayne and Carlos we comfortably got all Sixto's 205kg's winched onto the deck and securely fastened and covered for the 5 day cruise to Colombia. Getting him wet with salt water was a worry but they assured me the waters were calm at this time of the year.

           

 

 

 

The other 15 travelers arrived later on, Simon & Clare had arranged to get on the boat, I'd met Lui on AFL Grand Final night weeks earlier and in Panama City along with the Dutch group of three. The other passengers were Swiss, German and a couple of groups from Melbourne. Together with the crew there were 20 on board, two cats, a dog, Sixto, no showers and plenty of booze. Not so spacious but comfortable enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The journey included about 35 hours of travel and spent the first three days wandering around the San Blas islands, an archipelago of 365 islands, some tiny with a couple of palm trees, the largest with an airport and immigration office. Most of the islands are inhabited by the Kuna Yala indigenous group which were forced here when the Spanish arrived and mistreated them in parts of Panama and Colombia. The legend has it that they defeated the Spanish when they arrived at the islands in a vicious battle. They have since successfully revolted against the Panamanian government's attempts to suppress their customs and have been granted autonomy in control of the islands. Plantains, coconuts and fish are eaten and coconuts and lobsters are exported. The people come with big smiles and a very relaxed manner.  

 



We spent an evening on one of the islands where the local women prepared a lobster feast. 

 

We visited one of the larger islands one day and were given a tour of the community, it felt somewhat obtrusive but interesting to see the housing, colourful clothing and hear of their proud independence and communal way of living. The children go off fishing in dugout canoes or play music when not at school.

 

5 days of chilling out, playing chess, listening to music, reading, swimming to the islands, snorkelling, drinking beer and Nicaraguan rum, drinking games, sea sickness and throwing up for some, making bonfires on  the islands and learning a thing or two about Debbie and Wayne's life of living on the boat and sailing the Caribbean for the past few years.  

 

With my buddies Lui and Simon 

 

 

 

Coming in to Cartegena bay and South America on our fifth afternoon after two days of open seas, rain and a bit of swaying. It was the evening Colombia qualifies for the World Cup, I missed the celebrations in the streets as I chose the spend the final evening on the boat in the harbour with a couple of the guys and the crew. We finished off the beer and enjoyed the extra space and talk of Colombia and sailing.  

 

 

 

The following morning we called in a boat to carry Sixto to the dock and slowly and surely tied him up and winced him onto the little boat. The two Colombians with the boat assured me we'd get there safely and dry.   

 

 

 

Lucas, Wayne, Carlos and I balancing Sixto while Dennis lowered the ropes.

 

 

 

 

 

Cleanly shaven for a new continent, happy and ready to slowly get to land where 6 of us lifted Sixto onto the timber dock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Immediately cleaned once on land to get rid of any salt from the sail and ready for sunny Colombia.

 

Nicaragua and getting to the harbour

 

An easy crossing gets me into Nicaragua, things get simpler, slower and considerably cheaper. A land of lakes and volcanoes and sadly just another Latin American country invaded by the Spanish 400 years ago and more recent US interventions to prevent the construction of a canal and fighting the rise of the guerilla movement. I’m constantly hailed on the roads in the hope of hitchhikers getting a ride until they see my bags taking up the space behind me. Leon was my first stop, yet another colonial town but this one has an unusual charm as it seems little money is spent on restoring the buildings and is not so obsessed with comfortable tourism. The beer is better here. There’s so many river crossings that never get tiring to gaze over especially when they open up to the sea or snake through a deep valley. I’ve now reached the edge of my large map of Mexico so I spent an afternoon searching for a map of Nicaragua in vain and settle for a sketch of the country from google maps which is working well. Getting lost is always fun until the directions I’m offered contradict each other. A cop catches me out overtaking on a continuous line and sends me on my way after a pep talk and a $4 bribe. The sunny lunch stops in the mountains are so restful, people watching as the buses flow through, the commotion builds then returns to silence. The chatty women cooking away with humble facilities amuse themselves by poking fun at me on a ride up to Esteli. Is that your horse they ask, nodding towards Sixto and stand nearby for a camera phone shot. More rice and beans and tough cuts of beef.   

 

The two lakes are vast and cover a big chunk of the country. Granada sits on Lake Nicaragua where I take in a few days and then take a ferry to Ometepe, the island within it. A real paradise it is, two towering active volcanoes on an island in a lake in the tropics.  A natural wonder. A cruise inland on the surprisingly good roads takes me to Fidel's hostel where I stay for a few days. It's more a commune with no other foreigners and an eclectic mix of Nicaraguans of all ages with assigned roles in managing the homestead. They're a warm, curious bunch who make me very welcome.

 

I set off at sunrise one morning to hike the 1400m high volcano. I chose not to pay the inflated price for a guide so take it alone. The hike up takes two and a half hours passing wet, muggy, humid and cold stages and I'm offered avocadoes from the monkeys pushing them down at my feet and scattering off. There's too much mist in the air to enjoy the views at the peak but I rest at the nearby lake and share mangoes with a Spanish couple who I passed on the way up.

On descending I daydream with my ipod on and somehow take the wrong turn down a path and after two hours I realise I'm off track. The roaring noise from the nearby animals start to intimidate me and I get paranoid that I'm being chased by when it gets closer and louder. Eventually after I jog further down the path comes to an end and the forest opens up into a huge clearing. I can see the lakes waters which put me at ease but have no idea where I am. After crossing the fields and roll under a couple of fences, I see a farmer who directs me through several farms to get to the main road. He assures me the noises were just howler monkeys, louder this time of the year he says. After asking for permission to pass through several farms and stopping to chat to the guys working the corn crops I eventually make it to the road and am guided 3 further kilometres to my starting point, no less than four hours from leaving the peak. After a few more days of hanging by the natural springs, leisurely walks and rides throughout the island I farewell my Nicaraguan family at the hostel and set off early to catch the morning ferry to the mainland and ride on to San Juan del Sur to meet Simon and Clare and their mate Luke who flew in from Canada for a short trip. I met Simon and Clare a few weeks earlier in Guatemala, we caught up in Honduras to go diving and now we spend a few days surfing and chilling out in this fun surf town in the Nicaraguan south. We get the diving group back when Steve arrives a couple days on and Ian on the weekend. We do the local rum, hangovers and surfing and enjoy our last days before the group splits once again.

  

 



 

 

 

An evening spent visiting the turtles at a nearby beach coming out to the shore. Hundreds come by two or three times a year for the six month season to dig a large hole in the sand, lay 90-120 eggs, bury them and waddle off the sea again and swim on as far as Peru, never to see their offspring which hatch a month or so on. 

 

I leave San Juan and Nicaragua, farewelling Steve and Ian who have given me plenty of laughs  and good times over the past few weeks. I have less than a week to get to Turtle Caye marina on the Caribbean coast in Panama where Sixto and I along with 16 others are getting aboard the Wildcard and sailing to Colombia, something I've been looking forward to for a while. Simon and Clare were supposed to be on the boat, unfortunately it was overbooked so they've been forced on to another leaving on the same day. We plan to meet in Panama City in a few days. I spend the following days getting through two difficult border crossings, the Costa Rica and Panama customs procedures become the most disorganized and difficult thus far. I stick to the superbly paved Panamerican Highway for this section, spending only 24 hours in Costa Rica , including my longest ride of 652km's one day and am surprisingly let off with warnings for traffic infringements on three occasions, one in Costa Rica and twice in Panama. Who says the police are all corrupt and out to get you? I can't complain so far. If the highlight whilst charging through Costa Rica was avoiding the high prices and winding through the forests of the south, the highlight of Panama was the cheapest fuel I've found so far, crossing the Panamerican bridge high above the canal as I approached the city and visiting the locks the following day. It brought me back to crossing the Golden Gate back in my first week and excitingly been pushed by the high winds feeling high in the sky. Three nights in Panama City during a weekend was a fun time, the old town is particularly beautifully and the city itself well spread out along the waters. I spend my last day in Central America meeting the Caribbean once again and arriving a few hours early to the marina to meet Debbie,Wayne and Carlos the crew of the sailboat and figure out a way to get Sixto on safely ......      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watching the commercial ships pass through the canal and waiting patiently as the locks balance the water levels & with Lui and Clare at Panama City harbour 

 

The Honduras Underworld

I’m back on a Caribbean island. A day after crossing from Guatemala I board the ferry with Steve from Broome and Cormick and Geraldine from Ireland to the Honduran island of Utila. I had met Steve briefly at a hostel in Guatemala and as it happens we crossed paths a few days later. The island is very chilled, a typical small island vibe with lazy people killing time and plenty of fried food on the street. I came here to scuba dive and had also heard good things about the partying. I book in with a reputed dive centre in town at reasonable prices with accommodation included. I’d never dived before so I spent the week there undertaking an Open Water Diver certificate – five days of videos and classroom theory, some shallow water practice time and six tanks worth of diving in the sea, typically 40 minutes each to a maximum depth of 18m. I get a real buzz from learning the technique and witnessing the underwater world, the variety of tropical fish and intricate walls of hard and soft coral and all the colours on show. My highlights were seeing the parrotfish, giant crabs, sting rays, the fluorescent soft coral and a long group of small squid which hovered in a straight line in the water.     

 

 

 

 

Here’s my dive buddy Kristen and our leader Doug ready to jump off into the Caribbean one afternoon. We had a cool team of instructors, these guys seem to live to dive, some making a full time job of it, others spending months on end in different parts of the world doing whatever it takes to spend time underwater. It’s a fun network of people and atmosphere.

Not sure the diving and hangovers went well together but we formed a fun group to hit the bars at night before diving in the afternoons. I had met Ian and Simon in Guatemala at the lodge where I had the fall, Simon and Claire were planning to come here to dive so we timed it well and Ian happened to show up surprisingly at the hotel. The beers flowed pretty long most nights and we got into the spirit doing the shot challenges at some bars to get the free t-shirts.

 

After a couple extra days of rest I dragged myself away from the island and made the three day trek across the country to reach the border with Nicaragua. Sixto was waiting at the port car park back on the mainland and was eager to get back on the road. We had some fun and peaceful days on the move again. I decided to take on what looked like a shortcut through the central highlands in what was a pretty sketchy road full of potholes but offered some of the greenest countryside I’d seen in a while, some happy farmers, many kids happy to wave and laugh at the gringo and much dodging of dogs, horses and chickens. I was stopped many times by the cops in Honduras, just wanted to chat really and ask of any dangers I had encountered. They were probably the coolest cops I'd dealt with, this guy here insisted I take a photo with him.

 

 

 

Guatemala and the gringo trail

Once the documents were taken care of with relative ease and Sixto was fumigated, arriving in Guatemala was a real breath of fresh air. Within the first few miles of entering it felt like a new start in a place I knew little about. Within the first few days, riding through this country reminded me so much of time riding through Laos. Although the countries are an entire hemisphere apart they lie on similar lines of latitude with similar climates and landscapes and have similar agriculture, food, pace and street living. The streets and houses are alike and the peoples are both warm, gentle, patient and composed, the indigenous women with beautiful skin and big mysterious eyes and the children’s energy and smiles as wide and happy as possible. They both have tragic histories of civil wars and intervention but in the majority of the country they humbly carry on an agrarian way of life, close to their families with only the most essential of possessions. Their similarities show a lot about existing naturally in the tropics with minimal external influence on a day to day level.

 

Unlike in Laos, I’m able to communicate with a common language and I find I’m very welcomed by the men in the streets. The women offer a colder approach for reasons understood but the men of all ages extend a warm hand with all the time in the world to pause for a moment and I find myself having the same conversations about their country, my country and my travels. It’s always appreciated when I have a complaint to make about Mexico. Sixto is always a conversation starter, the bikes are bigger here and all the guys seem to ride one or have knowledge of them. Boys want to know size and value. Older men, even those with a heavy load of firewood on the back, suspended by a strap against their forehead stop to warn of their weather predictions and dangers lying ahead. Riding through bigger towns and cities are always interesting with street sellers at traffic lights, like a walking market of clothing, knick-knacks and entertainers. I stop at a petrol station one afternoon for respite from the pouring rain until the armed security guard, at a petrol station?, tells me he received a call from his office who have seen me loitering on camera and asks me to move on, still in the pouring rain.

I rode into Flores from the border to rest in the small island town ready for a trip to the nearby Mayan ruins at Tikal the following day. Guatemala seems to have a handful of well worn backpacker stops and here at a busy hostel I’m introduced to the gringo trail for the first time, the network of travelers open to a good time and willing to offer advice on where they’ve been or chasing information on the next stop on the trail. It can get a little overwhelming to stop speaking Spanish, eating burgers in tourist restaurants and having the element of surprise taken out of the next place nevertheless it’s always fun to share an experience and a laugh, gain another perspective and drink beer and tequila through the evenings. I hang out with Hugh and James from Sydney whose Aussie humour and attitudes are a refreshing welcome. After a couple of days I ride on towards the central highlands on an eventful day of riding.

My GPS, which I’ve had since Texas, has been helpful for compass direction when stuck and disoriented, decided to stop working that morning so I had to revert to inconsistent road signs, my map of Mexico which covers a few countries further south and confirming directions on the street. There’s two issues with this, the map is not overly detailed with highways and secondary roads the only roads on it and secondly, I may have mentioned this earlier, Latin Americans, from my experiences so far, are not very good at saying ‘’I’m not sure’’ or ‘’I don’t know’’, instead suggesting the direction to a particular town when they have no idea which way it is. I appreciate the custom that everyone is willing to help strangers and that it’s rude not to but it often sends me round in circles or way off track. I’ve now learnt to read people’s expressions to work out if they really know what they’re talking about or ask groups of people as they’re more likely to discuss it together and offer better advice.

After hitting the 20,000km mark on my odometer and a celebratory Fanta, I take advice on the road to Lanquin knowing that I’ve overstretched the last highway. I’m send back 30km’s and told to take a left 8km’s past the next town. At the intersection, a bunch of workers at the bus stop point in the direction I want to hear. Within a few kilometres I’m hit by a silence and the asphalt turns to a very rocky, slippery surface which Sixto is not too happy about, his suspension and tyres aren't suited to this. I carry on and after a few minutes I stop to check my map which doesn’t show any road through here which can only mean I’m taking the shorter direct distance but much longer in time as it's likely to meander up and around the mountain range and the road condition is not going to get better, hopefully without any rain it won’t get worse. Later on some road workers tell me I’m two to three hours away and laugh when I ask if there’s asphalt in sight. It’s only mid afternoon so I’m happy to stick at a slow pace, watch the scenery change and greet the locals by the roadside on their way home from work with pick and machete in hand.

I spend the next couple of hours admiring the sharp cliffs drops and river crossings and stop for a drink when I reach a small village and chat with a few guys who make fun of me for choosing to take this road with Sixto, there was a better option supposedly. The night begins to fall quickly and the drizzle gets a little heavier when I’m told I still have half an hour's ride. Further on, I offer my water bottle to some road workers putting timber sleepers down in the mud who also tell me I have half an hour to go. The road gets narrower and windier and follows a creek for a long while and the mosquitoes come out to bother me. I’m exhausted by this point, roads of different sized rocks and pebbles means I have permanently focused on five metres ahead of me for the past few hours. I must be close to the town when the sun has set and I turn a corner slowly but slightly too sharp and before I know it I’ve slipped and fallen to my left. I pick myself up , hit the kill switch and notice I’ve snapped both my clutch levers at the hand and foot. A guy rides around the corner, helping me lift Sixto up and push him to the side of the road and says the town is only a couple of kilometres away. I collect my thoughts, take a breath and hail a tuk-tuk which passes a few minutes later. Unable to change gears, I convince the driver and passengers to wait while I lock up the bike and get my bags together. A truck also passes with backpackers on the back after an afternoon tubing on the river. James spots me and jumps off to see what’s going on and gives me directions to the lodge.

I make my way there shortly after, drop my bags off and have a quick beer with the guys and given directions to Otto’s house, who may be able to help me with his pickup truck. A nice guy, we agree to push Sixto onto his truck and bring him back to the lodge for the night so together with a bunch of village kids and some planks of timber we make our way back down the mountain and by torchlight we push Sixto up into the tray and later slowly bring him down the ramp at the lodge. Finally I get to settle and realize the lodge is very big and full of the usual suspects – Western Europeans, North Americans, Aussies and Kiwis. I catch up with James and Hugh and party the night away, the beers go down well after a long day. The following morning I make a visit to the only motorcycle mechanic in town who had already heard of my fall and take him out to the lodge to explain what’s happened. Cardoso was incredible helpful and reassuring, he didn’t have a spare clutch that would suit so he immediately jumped on his bike with the broken pieces and rode one and a half hours to the provincial town with the hope of finding a replacement. I checked a few times during the day to see if he had returned but not until late afternoon did he show up, explaining having visited all the mechanics in town and not surprisingly nobody had a clutch to fit so he went to a welderer and had the pieces perfectly soldered together. We got back to Sixto and fitted the pieces and everything was as good as new. For a day’s work, petrol, welding and getting me back riding within a day, Cardoso only wanted $14, something that would have probably cost ten times the price back home, so I left him a decent tip and much gratitude. 

 

My stop at Lanquin was to see the UNESCO listed Semuc Champey, a breathtaking series of waterfalls and clear pools and underground rivers which is probably the closest thing I’ve seen to paradise. The tour also took in an impressive cave swim with waterfalls and rope climbs and an 11m bridge jump.

At the lodge I stayed at a cabin still being constructed high up the on hill, my bed a couple of metres away from a full size natural window overlooking the roaring river and waking up to misty mountains and glaring sun. Pretty awesome spot. I stayed at the lodge for several days but went for a ride my second last day to take a break from the socializing, explore the area and get much needed cash from an ATM.

I traced my steps from the earlier evening, following the track until I reached a paved highway towards a bigger town. The weather turns pretty sour that afternoon and I got stuck in a windy storm, the sky becoming darker by the minute with no hint of an end. After food and cash stops and a rest I started my return in the late afternoon. Half way back, the rains got harder and I began fearing reached the rocky road in worse condition that the evening of my fall. I was too far gone to return to the provincial town so considered stopping somewhere on the highway for the night. Nothing really presented itself, just a little roadside village here and there with little but a few homes on the hill and a store or two. I stopped when two men waved desperately for my attention and asked for help to drag a motorbike up the hill which has slipped a few metres down the cliff having been casually parked in soft dirt all day in the rain. They suggested trying a private farm a few kilometres on which I couldn’t find and before I knew it I was close to the end of the highway and turnoff to Lanquin. The rains had momentarily stopped so I pulled over to greet a man by the road. His name was Jose.

I asked Jose for the closest hotel and he mentioned Lanquin but I explained myself and he understood my predicament of not wanting to ride the road in its current condition. The other option was riding an hour in the other direction which wasn’t pleasing as I’d need to backtrack and return again the following morning. He mentioned buses heading to Lanquin and that the last one would pass in the next half hour. It struck me to ask if I could leave my bike at his place, under his care, take a bus and return with another bus in the morning. Jose’s instant expression was the warmest I’d received in the past five months. I’ll never forget the look on his face. There wasn’t a question whether he’d help me out, a big grin come over him and he offered to make some space by his door and put a cover on. He insisted he didn’t want any money. A few minutes had passed and before I knew it we were joined by several children, a few women and another man. It was his brother, wife, sister-in-law, mother and their children who lived in the two little wooden shacks clad in corrugated iron that sat perched on the highway cliff far away from anyone else. I greeted the family and tried to get the shy children to warm to me, parking Sixto is the space provided and while one of the boys kept a lookout for the bus approaching in order to hail it, Jose proudly showed me his little piece of the world on the cliff behind his home where he grew vegetables, coffee and cardamom. We shared each other’s story in the misty silence until the bus arrived and I was sent on the roof as it was already overloaded and sat and watched the night fall through the valley, soaked in more rains. The following morning Jose was waiting for me when I shouted for the bus to stop outside his place and all the family watching on curiously as I slowly packed my bags on to Sixto, making small talk, hoping to be offered coffee which wasn’t to be. It was a long and exhausting ride to Antigua that day, a colonial city to the west.  

After a few days in Antigua, doing little but recovering from my cold and eating at the market, I rode north to Lake Atitlan, a volcanic endorheic lake, i.e. it doesn’t flow to the sea. It’s a magical setting with villages dotted around it and a few volcanoes as backdrops. I take a kayak out for an afternoon as well as chill out by the water and hang out with a few travelers at the bars at night.

 

 

 

 

My way out is stopped for a while as a big group of young guys fill the road with sand after it had given way in a storm. I spend the next couple of days heading to the Honduras border. My time here and the Guatemalan people have been a real highlight for me and a place I wish I stayed longer. I leave in high spirits. 

 

 

On leaving Mexico and a few days in Belize

I was happy to get riding again once I returned to Mexico. Everything intact, I rode back to Merida to get my tyres changes, Caleb was out of town but managed to get me a decent discount as his mates ran the Kawasaki dealership there. I was given great service and left after a day having seen probably my favourite main square in all of Mexico and details of where to find Marco, a friend of Jorge’s and part of the biker community in Bacalar, the last Mexican town I was heading for near the border with Belize. As I waited for my soup at a little restaurant along a quiet road I got off to admire my new tyres only to find I had a screw punctured through my front tyre without any air being released. A shock as I’d ridden over 19,000km’s without an issue but a couple hours after getting new tyres I had a puncture. I rode in to the nearby village police station to ask for directions to the closest tyre repairer and was escorted to a great guy who worked out of his carport. Off came the tyre for the second time in a day and after leaving the big smiles and warm reception from the extended family I continued on through the rains to Bacalar.

I set up my tent on the clear laguna before a couple of big bikers came over to greet me. It was Marco who had been told I was coming down and had hunted me down and who I had completed forget about. A very friendly guy who offered me to stay at his place but I decided to camp on the water and arrange to meet up the following day. Marco’s hospitality was overwhelming, when I returned to my tent later on I had a bag of sweets, yoghurt and drinks at my door and the next day after an oil change I spent time hanging out at his place and we went to his parents place for a great dinner and chat about the Mexicans before staying in his spare room. It was a great way to cap off my last night and two and half months in Mexico. I’ve had some great moments here, notably, passing through its deserts, mountains and lakes, time learning and being active on the farms, riding alone the pacific coast for days and surfing in its waters, fun times with backpackers in Mexico City, getting to know the biking community in the Yucutan, spending time relaxing and swimming with Jenn and experiencing beautiful towns like Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Zacatecas, Morelia, Oaxaca and Merida. I was also ready to leave and start afresh.

I rode into Belize the next day. The border crossings were painful at both ends but I managed to ride through to the northern provincial town, Orange Walk for my first night. My few days in Belize were met with miserable weather and flooded roads, not the tropical paradise I was hoping for. Belize is a small country only a few hundred kilometres in length known mainly for having the longest barrier reef in the world behind that of Queensland and thus popular for diving. It was a significant land during the Mayan era, rejected by the Spanish for lack of known resources and later a slave colony was set up by the British making it the only English speaking country south of the U.S. It gained independence from Britain in 1981. Belize is highly ethnically diverse – Mayans, Creoles, Garifunas, Hispanics, Mennonites and more. I travelled through from the north and exited to the west. I didn’t experience much other than highway riding and stopping for the heavy rains, something to eat and somewhere to sleep. Two people will remind me of my experiences here, Slim & Roy. I ate at Slim’s little restaurant on the highway, a memorable barbequed creole chicken and a chat about the social decay of the country since independence.

On my last evening I decided to stop riding near the border town of San Ignacio when I saw an old sign directing me to the Smith Family Farm with ‘camping by the river and cold beer’. I rode in through the farm and was met by Roy, a limping skinny old man who declared it wasn’t possible to camp by the river due to flooding and he had no beer but I decided to stay once he offered me a cheap cabin and rice and beans on the house. He even fetched me some beers later so I joined him in the hammocks under the carport. Roy was a kind man and wanted someone to chat to, he lived on the farm alone, sometimes with long term ex-pats staying there or campers, he was proud of his free and secluded life among the trees which he planted, the variety of birds and the tranquility, his paradise. He lived simply with his bicycle and strict self-providing diet of rice, beans, avocados, marijuana and coffee. He shared his story with me, his wife ran away to the U.S. nine years ago around the time God spoke to him and told him to find the wilderness, where he moved to the farm and claimed to have never left its grounds. For the next couple of hours he told me of his 7 day Adventist beliefs and went on a rampage of quoting passages from the bible, its meanings and contradictons, stories on hell, obedience, Noah and his ark and all things universal which left me intrigued and exhausted. I left the next morning and crossed effortlessly into Guatemala

Island from another world

                                      

 

I left Sixto in good hands, resting comfortably under a tree at a friend of Rosario’s backyard, I packed a small bag, took a bus to the airport and landed in Havana shortly after. I was fittingly welcomed to Cuba by having to help push start my taxi at the airport, unsure if we were going to rattle along all the way in to the city, however the half hour ride did bring together all those images of Cuba I’d had in my mind – the revolutionary propaganda painted against walls and signed along the highway, the brightly coloured Chevrolet’s from the 50’s, the ox at work in the tropical setting, the deserted highways, the rattling old overcrowded buses and people standing around doing very little, an old man with a cigar, an old women selling fruit on the sidewalk. It’s all there, probably as it has been for a long, long time. Supposedly it’s changing.

 

 

                                      

To me it seems Cuba has always held those romantic notions that has kept us interested from afar: the positive theories of socialism at work; taking sides with Fidel Castro as David overcoming the might of Goliath or the U.S.; the idea of drinking rum and salsa dancing in the streets; the feeling of a relaxed and slow Caribbean island. These curious ideas of Cuba wore off on me as the week went on.   

                                                    

 

After 400 years of Spanish rule then a handful under the U.S. it gained independence at the beginning of the 20th century. Of the revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro along with Ernesto Guevara led a guerilla war to successfully overthrow the dictatorship and soon after withstood a U.S. led invasion at the ‘Bay of Pigs’ and severe trade embargos. Within a few short years the government was modeled closely to that of the Soviet Union, even holding Soviet nuclear weapons aimed at the U.S. in a bitter stand-off for 15 days. The ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ was one of the tensest and vulnerable moments of the Cold War. Castro became an inspiration to revolutionaries and regime changes across the developing world. In the following decades living standards dropped despite healthcare, education and housing all provided by the state. Things would get worse with the demise of the USSR in 1991. Its strong alliance and trade dependence was no longer.
 

                                                   

 

The subsequent years, ‘the special period’ was very testing for the government with a major fall in oil and food available which was earlier subsidized from the Soviets. It encountered a somewhat artificial ‘peak oil crisis’ which is something the rest of the world can view as an indication of how our lives are likely to change with the decline of oil production. Some interesting ideas and necessary steps were taken. Agricultural farmland was divided up to smaller lots to give more autonomy and increase productivity and agricultural practices focused on organic methods to improve the quality and longevity of the soils. With reduced bus services bikes became a necessary mode of transport for all ages, urban and rooftop gardens popped up all over the cities, household food rationing coupons ensured people were getting the basic nutritional requirements, hitchhiking and carpooling systems where implemented. In all, a stronger community spirit was formed and sharing whatever could be offered was encouraged. Nowadays, a free market is beginning to open up in certain sectors with private businesses and licenses offered. Despite this, I can’t see things changing quickly, lack of opportunities and holding off on progress seems to be what Cubans are used to and accept. A sense of ambition and improvement to the mundane and contentment with just the basics will take generations to change. It does feel like a place stuck back in time where greed and superfluous comforts have no place, just slow and simple living is the order of the day. I only spent a week here which allowed me a few days in Havana and a few days in the fertile valley of Vinales a few hours away.

 

                                         

 

                                       

I did a lot of walking in Havana, finding some important landmarks and museums. It happened to be Carnavale week so I went down to the seaside to watch the floats and dancers. For every ten blokes that harassed me for money, or asked for me to buy them a drink or milk for ‘their baby’ or introduce me to prostitutes I would meet one genuinely friendly Cuban. I met Hector at a local bar who wanted to show me the streets and speak English and the multi-lingual Omer who I met on the boulevard and who I sat with for hours playing chess and drinking coffee.

 

                                      

 

 

                                          

 

I took a ride out to Vinales, a small town nestled in a beautiful, red valley producing much of the rich fruits and vegetables and a leader in tobacco growing. I took a horse out for an afternoon with a couple of brothers who showed me around and brought me to Miguel, a tobacco farmer. My highlight of Cuba was probably sitting with Miguel and his son with a coconut and a cigar watching the rain drizzle down over the lush and peaceful valley.  

                                          

 

These brothers entertained me for an afternoon, repairing the soles of my riding boots, they claimed to have been repaired shoes everyday for the past 25 years. There was plenty of cigar smoking and shots of rum and trying to fathom why and how it was possible to ride a bike around foreign places.