An update from Cienfuegos
Friends,
I am approximately 400 kilometers into my walk across the island of Cuba. I continue to feel stronger and stronger, physically and mentally — though there have been very significant challenges throughout the journey.
I will be coming back to the US for two weeks at the end of March to resupply (I also need to exit and re-enter Cuba, due to Cuban visa requirements). I hope to see some of you then!
This email has three sections:
1. The boring stuff
2. An update on my walk across Cuba.
3. Three previous emails sharing the genesis and beginning of my walk (including a link to photos). If you are new — start at the bottom and work your way up!
The boring stuff:
1. I am not on social media at the moment, and there are still so many people I want to keep in touch with! Thus, I have added new recipients without asking for their permission; if you would rather not receive future emails, no worries! Easily “unsubscribe” with the link below and you will be removed immediately, with my apologies for the inbox invasion!
2. Please do not forward this email to anyone without my permission. If you would like to share with a friend, please have them fill out this simple form and I will add them to the list. http://subwaysets.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ff202842db5071929d501ad59&id=91df6fb05f&e=0dd60517b6
Also do not share this content on social media.
3. I have no editor; if you are interested in hearing more about one thing or another, please let me know and I will it include it in future editions!
— —
An update on my walk:
Frustrated, I walked out of Matanzas shortly after sending email #3. My new sombrero did little to block the fierce sun overhead, I had a mild hangover, and I was upset with myself for wating two precious days waiting for Western Union and my mom to get their shit together.
The U.S. Government has forbidden U.S banks from conducting business here since the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Cubans (and visitors from all over the world) draw on bank accounts and use ATMs in towns and cities across the island, but my plastic credit and debit cards are worthless. I cannot use them anywhere. Knowing this, I had traveled to the island, via Mexico, with two thousand Euros hidden deep inside my backback. I had run through most of my funds in a month, learning how to live cheaply in Cuba, a country where $5 can lead to an epic evening, and $100 pretty much guarantees a miserable night. Thus I needed a cash infusion.
The simplest way to send money to Cuba is via Western Union. Graciously, my mom agreed to initiate the transfer from cold, snowy Mt. Kisco NY. She drove down to the supermarket and told the clerk she wanted to send money to her son in Cuba. The W.U. Rep assumed the recipient was a soldier stationed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, considered domestic, rather than international. Therefore, the office in Matanzas couldn´t find the transfer number in their system. Even if I was near Guantanamo, I doubted the U.S. military would swing the gates wide open for a random American dude walking across Cuba, my Yankee passport and New York accent be damned. So I wated for my mom to sort out the mess stateside.
In the meantime, I had missed a dinner rendezvous with one of the most interesting characters I´d met in Cuba. Jerry was a forty year old, very dark skinned black man. With his tall, thin build, opaque aviator sunglasses a scar over his eyebrow, and a wool coat sporting an upturned collar, he reminded me of the African drug lord from that terrible Nick Cage movie. Over beers, he told me his story: emigrating to Norway at 25, working hard to earn $180 per hour as a chef, and fathering five children on both sides of the Atlantic. He spoke with an easy laugh and we bonded over our shared interest in motorcycles; on the table, he had a long metal cylinder, carried into the country by a friend and destined to fix his Kawasaki 850cc sport bike, one of the only such machines on the island.
Due to circumstances out of my control, I was an hour and a half late to the dinner and just missed him. Two of his friends remained. They very insistently tried to sell me a nearby bed and a cheap woman with whom to share it. After buying them several beers and a pizza, in the hopes they could connect me with Jerry, I walked several kilometers back to my hotel, annoyed by the time and money I had wasted, and knowing I´d probably never learn more about this fascinating man.
The next morning, finally, after two days of running back and forth between my hotel (and wifi to coordinate with my mom) and the W.U. office in Matanzas, I had the cash.
And so it felt good to leave Matanzas, towards Limonar, splitting off from the busy north coast highway onto a quieter, less traveled country road. I passed a few military bases, signs blazoned with photos of Fidel Castro and Revolutionary quotes. Soon after, I came upon the first of a vast array of hydroponic organic farms, with their long beds of lettuce glistening with water underneath hot sun. I have been told Cuba is one of the only countries in the world where the majority of a city´s food is grown within a 20 mile radius.
Walking along, I poked my head through the gate of a factory. A beautiful young blond girl in uniform smiled, and asked me if she could help. I handed her my large water canteen, and she brought it back filled with cold water, ice, and the distant taste of fruit. I mentioned the sweetness to her, and she explained that the factory made a special juice for children with asthma.
Continuing east through the afternoon, I stopped in a small town for directions and came upon a large man underneath the chassis of a classic 1950´s Chevrolet. His family soon gathered as I shared details of my walk, and he pressed two cold beer bottles into my hand, one after the other.
That night I camped at a water filtration plant, accompanied by a water filtration plant, accompanied by a friendly security guard in his early 60s. We sat on simple chairs, our feet resting on concrete blocks, and talked for hours about Cuban and U.S. politics, our families and lives, and his time spent in Africa as a Cuban soldier fighting in the Angolan Civil War. “La guerra y el Diablo tienen la misma cara”, he told me. “War and the devil have the same face”. Some 300,000 Cuban men fought in Africa during the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s. I am interested in learning more about this conflict.
The next few days tracked east and south through the countryside. I passed through San Miguel de Los Baños, previously a spa town and dotted with hotel ruins and beautiful old colonial casas, mostly in good repair. They reminded me so much of those pleasant Mid City New Orleans homes. Talking to a friendly man outside his house, I learned they were built for wealthy sugar cane plantation owners and traders in the 1920s, out of full kits shipped directly from the United States.
For $2.20, I lodged in a hotel along the road to the next town, Pedro Betancourt, in a comfortable bed blasted by air conditioning. That evening, I walked the young receptionist back into town, and she shared that she was on the way to the doctor; her six year old daughter suffered from asthma and a changing weather front had brought on an attack. I suddenly remembered the juice factory, and told her I had stopped in. Did this remedy help her child?
She explained the liquid was an ailment, rather than medicine, and thus not free under the socialized health care system; she could only rarely afford to buy it for her daughter. As I left the next morning, over her protests, I pressed a five dollar note into her palm. It felt good to bring my juice factory experience full circle, indirectly becoming a customer of that lovely blond girl back on the outskirts of Matanzas.
One week and a hundred kilometers of walking took me to the south coast of Cuba, and the town of Playa Larga. I happened upon the Finca (farm) of Playa Larga, and shortly fell in love with the extended family that calls it home. Over a week, our lives became intertwined.
Imagine starting a bed and breakfast, catering to clients from all over the world. You compete with an oversupply of other houses, but you have something unique to offer: the fasincating story of your arrival to a wild jungle in 1989, and the next 25 years hammering out a hardscrabble way of life. You are in the late stages of turning rocky soil into good, loamy dirt, building a bridge over a lagoon to provide a platform for birdwatching, and cleaning up almost three decades of unknowingly depositing plastic and other material over the land. You are proud to offer a simple, comfortable room to rent, delicious lobster dinners, and fascinating tours of a workshop, stable, and the ground around the farm.
I have started several small businesses; it is not easy to do. Now, picture growing up in a place where everyone has a predetermined salary and the stores set identical prices for their goods. Small armies of economists work to balance the numbers for state-run businesses, but they are out of sight and mostly out of mind.
Suddenly, you open this “particular” (private) bed and breakfast — you are thrust into capitalism! You have a business to run. You have a family to feed.
This is the situation facing many new casa particular owners in Cuba, including my family at the Finca.
I spent a week catching them up on the basics of marketing, laying out a simple plan to attract more guests. Working afterhours on the one computer in town, the air conditioning turned off and sweat dripping down my face, I successfully created their very first email account, and unsuccessfully labored to build them a website; finally, I coordinate with my big brother Rob, and using my images and text, he kindly constructed the page for the Finca of Playa Larga from his machine in the U.S.:
Alberto and his son Alian were hard at work back at the Finca. In a previous email I mentioned my back problems and a visit to a doctor in Havana, complete with X-ray. These issues had grown worse over hundreds of kilometers walking under the strain of a heavy backpack.
Out of strong Cuban hardwood and sturdy Italian garbage dumpster wheels, they built me a beautiful pushcart to haul all my gear. It is elegant, graceful, and highly functional, and makes my walking much easier. I have driven a brand new $35,000 pickup truck off the dealer lot, and it did not give me nearly as much pleasure as I take wheeling this simple machine east towards Santiago de Cuba.
Part 1 of this email (#4) brings us to Playa Larga. I am currently in Cienfuegos, about 100 kilometers east. I plan to send out Part 2 early next week, hopefully with more photos to accompany these words.
Con paz y respeto,
Dan
(these letters were written in early 2015 during my walk across Cuba)
If you’re interested in what I’m up to now, and how I’m applying my lessons from my personal travels to professional endeavors — check out my company Bolt Travel.
