Island that Dared (29 page)

Back in Punta Gorda, hunger pangs reminded me of a missed breakfast. In a newish but grotty restaurant, where waves were splashing through open windows on to grey plastic tiles, I was the only customer. Five waitresses, sitting chatting around a central table, at first ignored my beckoning. When I loudly demanded a beer one sour-puss strolled over, grunted in response to my greeting, then indicated a wall notice. Alcohol must not be consumed on the premises. Five minutes later she sauntered back with the menu and before I could order rejoined her
compañeros
, took out a pocket-mirror and comb, did some hair-fixing, applied lipstick (a scarce commodity) and pretended to forget me. This team wore neat orange-and-blue uniforms. Two of them were playing chess which somehow added a surreal note to the episode.

The menu listed only two fish dishes (both ‘off’) and paella. The watery paella, when served half an hour later, was accompanied by a small saucer of chopped white cabbage (the ‘salad’) and an even smaller saucer of shrimps in batter – by far my least edible Cuban meal and expensive at CP8.

On my dissatisfied way out I encountered Louise, Nancy’s niece, with whom I’d talked briefly the day before. She had heard I was in the restaurant and wanted to talk more. We sat outside in the starlight on a wooden
deck-bar
, extending over the water, where family groups were enjoying Hatueys and Tukolas. When I wondered why alcohol was forbidden within Louise laughed rather nastily and said, ‘Ask
el comandante
!’

It seemed Nancy had been commenting on my pro-Revolutionary stance and Louise felt this needed correcting.
El comandante
having lost his grip, any Cuban could say what they thought to any foreigner without fear. ‘You can write my name in your book, it’s OK, Amnesty is watching, I won’t go to prison because I think he’s no more powerful. The Special Period finished him. People my age saw he couldn’t run Cuba without help. I was eleven in ’92 and I was hungry, for three years or more. His independent Cuba is a lie. We must be dependent. Soviets, Americans, I don’t care. We need help or we’re hungry. Or like now, people stand two, three hours on
the road hoping for transport that isn’t there. In other countries people don’t stand for hours doing nothing. They spend time making money, then have fun spending it – never
doing nothing
!’

I asked, ‘Would you like to move to Miami where some Cubans make lots of money?’

Louise’s eyes flashed: large dark eyes in a small sallow face. ‘Cuba is my country! I love Cuba! I won’t ever be “an exile” – what’s that? A person
not
loving their country! Soon no more blockade, many more tourists and Cuba can be OK – you agree?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I disagree. The Cuba you love is a child of the Revolution, handicapped but legitimate. Would you have loved the Cuba your great-grandparents grew up in?’

‘That,’ snapped Louise, ‘is a stupid question!’ She peered then at my watch and said she must go, she had promised to babysit for her sister. Her farewell lacked the normal Cuban warmth and her outburst had been so very unusual that for a wild moment I speculated – ‘
agent
provocateur
?’

As though anxious to make amends, the rusty little ferry left twenty minutes early next morning. A strong wind made the bay choppy and most passengers huddled within a canvas ‘tent’ while I sat, amongst the bicycles, waving at the racing skiffs that skimmed past on their regular morning outing, some crewed by girls.

Throughout this six-mile, hour-long voyage (fare: NP2) the narrow exit to the sea is hidden by a long islet, at first seeming to merge with the green ridge of the bay’s southern shore. We paused at three other bushy islets for men equipped with buckets and sacks to jump on to wobbly jetties. At the second stop a young black man boarded and I made room for him beside me on a coil of rope. ‘Thank you missus – missus is right? You Canada? I like we talk! I have getting English for work with tourists. I get good English, I get good work, much peso!’

Not a promising beginning, yet Fausto proved to be good company. Realising that I wasn’t a
bona fide
tourist, he let it become obvious that he viewed that species as sub-humans to be used for profit. ‘Fair enough,’ I thought, ‘the exploited having a go at exploiting.’

Soon after entering the channel, which links the bay to the ocean and was little wider than the Thames at Westminster, one is underwhelmed by the squat, seventeenth-century Castillo de Jagua just visible above Perche, a fishing village that seems about to slip off its steep slope into the water.
This anti-pirate Castillo was Cuba’s third most important fortress in the eighteenth century and is now ineffectually being put to use as an Historic Monument.

From the landing-stage I set out to look for illegal lodgings; because of visiting Félix my trek would begin on the morrow. Perche’s natives were wary of the aged back-packer who was trying to tempt someone to break the law, but eventually someone did – a young white woman, Maria, after a long confab with an elderly mulatto. If I didn’t mind sharing a bed with a four-year-old I could stay for one night only: lodging and supper CP15.

This three-room home was lapped by water; one could – and my host did – fish from the verandah. Beneath it ducks quacked and splashed and elsewhere a litter of six-weeks-old puppies gambolled, their lurcher mother growling if the strange-smelling visitor approached. Off the kitchen, a fully furnished
baño
had been added when piped water was promised. Then the authorities ran out of pipes so the loo had to be flushed with sea water and Maria was still fetching well-water from the hill-top.

Beyond Perche’s packed little dwellings and rough pathways a motor road led to a 1960s high-rise town, created around industries hard hit by the Special Period. At once I was reminded of Siberia’s 1970s BAM towns, memorials to over-ambitious planners in distant offices. But here the apartment blocks were in better condition and the residents healthier.

Félix, however, was not healthy – he had been rushed to hospital the day before. His distraught wife, having read Alberto’s letter, clearly felt obliged to offer coffee but equally clearly felt relieved when I declined with effusive thanks.

I wandered then in search of beer to drown my disappointment; I’d been looking forward to talking with an Angolan veteran. Had this town prospered, it could have been a tolerable place to live: wide streets, grassy embankments, ample playgrounds, a capacious stadium, a theatre-
cum-cinema
and no through-traffic (even when there was traffic) because Jagua is at the end of the road. But the Special Period had left it dejected. I could find no open bar, café, restaurant, nor any ‘private enterprise’ pavement snacks. However I persisted, as one does when beer-hunting, and
eventually
a
tienda
appeared, its fridge half-full of Buccaneros. In that little shop the pace of commerce was pleasing. A young black woman, trying to decide which scent to buy with her precious CP5, conferred at length with the mulatto saleswoman. Seven little bottles were sniffed by both and compared and sniffed again while two amused young black men and I
waited patiently. Here too the counter display-case showed single wrapped sweets priced individually (CP 0.50), and mini-lollipops (CP 0.10) and mini-chocolate bars (CP 0.15). I bought one of each, to enable me to condemn their poisonously poor quality.

Avoiding the road, I returned to Perche a long way round, on dusty laneways linking
bohios
and crossing grazing spaces where the cows wore bells and underfed horses and mules reinforced the dejected aura.

Supper was served in the neat, clean living-room: a whole fish just out of the channel, fried in batter, a large bowl of plain white rice and a cabbage, tomato and cucumber salad. All cooking was done on two small electric rings.

In the sweltering little bedroom (fans are a luxury) a high shelf of gimmicky toys – presents from Miami – served as ornaments rather than playthings. A slatted blind admitted both mosquitoes and some unfamiliar winged insect which whizzed round and round the dim ceiling bulb. The predictable crisis came soon after I had retired; naturally, four-year-old Marita objected to sharing her bed with a total stranger. As this was the household’s only bed I proposed moving to the cooler verandah but the family insisted on sleeping in rocking-chairs.

The coastal track to Playa Giron begins at Luz, a small town eight miles from Perche on a dreary tarred road. The sea was invisible beyond a uniform expanse of dense, drab bush, man-high; on the other side lay empty parched fields. Those who blanket describe Cuba as ‘a beautiful island’ are being too kind. Where it’s beautiful it’s very beautiful and its unspoiled beaches are soothing. But sea, sand and palm trees, while nice to be with, don’t really challenge one’s store of superlatives. And many regions, away from the sierras and the coast, are unexciting.

I had walked scarcely a mile when a farm lorry stopped and two teenage girls made room for me in a cab smelling strongly of pigs. My trekking plan alarmed the elderly black driver; at Luz he borrowed my dictionary to look up ‘dehydration’ – what I would die of between Luz and Playa Giron. Seeming touchingly worried, he embraced me at the junction where the track began. Cubans are generous with spontaneous embraces.

By 7.30 I was happily on my way, the dawn golden over a slightly choppy sea, the silence broken only by the husky grating of wavelets playing with pebbles on a flat, stony shore. Inland, as far as the eye could see, that monotonous bush prevailed. (Why no palms in this region?) Two
hours later I paused to eat raisins and drink water – a rationed amount, I could refill my bottles only at Venero Feo, the one village en route. Already the sun felt aggressive and I was beginning to wonder if three days of this monotony would be two days too many. But one doesn’t turn back, at least not voluntarily.

At 11.00-ish came the sound of trotting hoof-beats; I was being pursued by a policeman, mounted on a diminutive mule borrowed from his brother when the lorry driver had reported a dotty old foreigner risking
dehydration
. With the aid of my map it was explained that Playa Giron could not be approached from the coast. A military zone intervened and swamps made its circumvention impossible – to find water I would have to return to Venero Feo and might well die of thirst on the way. Had this track been more beautiful and/or more exciting I would have grumbled. In the circumstances I was quite content to ride back to Luz, the charming young policeman carrying my rucksack.

Four vehicles took me over the sixty-odd zig-zagging miles to Playa Giron. A high truck cab to Abreus; a normally overcrowded bus to Macagua; the back of an open truck (the best bit) to Babiney – and finally a battered and perilously overcrowded bus that swayed sickeningly on the badly broken road through the swamps surrounding Playa Giron.

The first and longest stage, to Abreus, crossed level, apparently
uninhabited
country where several new banana and mango plantations had replaced canefields. Some patches of cane remained and we passed lines of laden ox-carts, often in the charge of grandparents who were
simultaneously
toddler-caring. On a few ranches cowboys were lassoeing calves for branding: is Cuba the last country where genuine cowboys operate? In between the new plantations it bothered me to see many square miles of equally fertile land lying idle, while Cuba imports so much of its food and thousands are unemployed or underemployed. Remembering how effectively the
barbudos
organised millions of workers during the 1960s, I wondered what would happen if the present government applied such measures to a generation not fired by Revolutionary zeal …

At sunset all five of Playa Giron’s
casas particulares
were full – or so they claimed … I deduced the proprietors were repelled by my appearance; one never sees a scruffy Cuban. Happily the tourist accommodation was congenial – three hundred (mostly unoccupied)
cabañas
widely scattered across the grassy shore where Cuba’s army and the invading exiles killed one another in 1961. Each cabin comprises sitting-room, double bedroom and
baño
with ample hot and cold water, enabling me to launder those
offensively scruffy garments. By then even my linen money-belt had its own distinctive stink.

One could write a whole book about the Bay of Pigs invasion and many specialists, working in various fields, have done just that. I’ll therefore confine myself to a quote from
The Rough Guide to Cuba
which gives an admirably succinct account of this seminal event.

Without its recently acquired historical significance, Playa Giron would never have made it on to the tourist trail. All around stretch mangrove (and other) swamps and the post-Invasion village, a mile or so inland, is a dusty straggle of detached one-storey houses replacing a wretched
charcoal-burners
’ settlement. (The motor road came after the Invasion.) Along the shore an ugly defensive wall, constructed to deter future invasions, completely blocks the
cabañas
’ view of the sea. Nearby, tattered little notices nailed to fences warn – in a whisper, as it were – ‘Military Zone’. The locals, ignoring these, take short cuts across the forbidden territory.