The wilder side of Cuba, with its hidden railway lines, empty beaches and forgotten relics
We’re heading south towards Cuba’s swamps, following a faint line on the map. Outside, the road is worsening while the landscape grows more beautiful, cane fields interrupted by vast ceiba trees. We pass through a village full of children laughing their way home, smart in their red and white “young pioneer” school uniforms. At the edge of a woodland, campesinos on horseback turn in their saddles, machetes hanging down past their spurs, gazing at our white Peugeot 301.
A woman is walking the track, an umbrella protecting her from the sun, and we stop to ask if she wants a lift. When she hears where we’re headed, she explodes: “Are you crazy? The river is flooded ahead.” A cart pulled by oxen is coming the other way. She calls to the driver to confirm this intelligence, and our lack of it. He nods towards the two huge beasts in front of him, saying: “I wouldn’t even ask these two to go through that river at the moment.” This is the Cuba Camila and I have been looking for, setting out from Havana after the island’s long lockdown, measures that have so far kept its coronavirus cases among the lowest in the Americas. Journey Latin America has a new “trailblazer” road trip, capitalising on Cuba’s place on the UK’s “safe corridor” list (though travel restrictions apply – see Essentials). We got away early, by dint of living in Havana. It means towns like Trinidad and Vi?ales remain closed, pushing us out from the mainstream.
Cuba’s history lies in its verges, in the broken railway lines, the rundown towns and forgotten peninsulas. “See Cuba before it changes,” people say, but it’s been changing forever. You can see it in the village names, in the statues of its poet heroes, in the eyes of friendly ladies guarding forts that once fended off fearsome pirates.
Havana is just returning to life as we leave. We pass along the city’s famed corniche, the Malecon, and then through the tunnel under Havana Bay that the dictator Fulgencio Batista built just before the 1959 revolution. The countryside envelops us, rain-washed hills filled with jacaranda and palm. The sense of freedom after months confined is overwhelming.
We spend our first night at Memories, Jibacoa, an off-the-shelf all-inclusive retreat on a beach 40 minutes out of town. Tourists are PCR tested at the airport and have to wait for the results, so JLA suggests holing up at the beach.
Cubans think their roads are worse than they are. It’s true you have to get used to sharing the blacktop with horse-drawn carts, cyclists, livestock, trucks piled high with stockfeed topped off by a crown of campesinos bouncing along. And you have to handle this while slaloming through the potholes. But with such light traffic, it’s fun.
We picked up a hitchhiker, a schoolgirl off to resit an exam. “I scored 98 per cent the first time,” she says, “but I need 100.” She wants to attend the province’s elite school, the Carlos Marx.
Once past the tourist resort of Varadero (where we should have spent the first night), we track north, breaking off to discover beaches where only the warm trade winds keep us company. It’s the perfect day, the only tremor the railroad tracks we cross with astonishing regularity. Rusted rails disappear under bushes, a reminder of the sugar industry that once made Cuba rich.
Night sees us at the Dhawa Hotel on Cayo Las Brujas, a key at the end of a 25-mile causeway. It only has 37 guests for its 521 rooms, so the following day we have its beach to ourselves, snorkelling among butterfly fish and parrotfish.
After a couple of days, we strike south. Crossing the country is the work of a few hours, and we pass tree-shaded Santa Clara where Che Guevara is buried. The city of Cienfuegos reveals itself when the road begins to be accompanied by a long paseo, a tree-lined walkway. That ends and the city’s corniche begins by a vast bay. Cienfuegos is often passed by in favour of its more famous neighbour on the south coast, Trinidad, but I think Cienfuegos is more beautiful. Its houses run the gamut from -colonial to midcentury modern. At night, in the light of a huge waterborne sign celebrating the city as birthplace to the bandmaster Benny Moré, its people dance and flirt.
Casa Camila is on the tip of a spit, a clapboard house on a street fronting and backing onto the bay. Camila and I breakfast on the terrace, taking our coffee to a small pier where we watch locals catch bait fish. Then we head into the Escambray mountains, through towns whose names – Cumanayagua, Guao – provide a link to Cuba’s disappeared indigenous people.
The waterfalls at El Nicho usually draw 300 people a day, but we are the only ones here. The path is covered in mushrooms enjoying the rainy season, while the river roars next to us. Cubans – including Camila – wouldn’t dream of swimming in November when water temperatures falls to 16C, but I’m front crawling into the falling water.
Jorge Felix Lemus takes us kayaking on Cienfuegos Bay, past the catamarans that usually take guests to Cayo Largo and Trinidad. “It makes me so happy being back on the water,” he says. “I feel at peace.” Afterwards, we take a tour of the city. Founded in 1819 by French colonists, it has a different feel to its Spanish counterparts. Still, the ubiquitous and loud games of dominoes are under way in the main square, shaded by hibiscus (each Cuban city was founded under a different tree). Our guide, Joley Santana, shows us the Tomás Terry theatre and I try to convince Camila it is named after Terry Thomas, the actor, whispering “ding dong” in her ear. She looks alarmed. It turns out to be named after a 19th-century slaver. I ask Joley if it will be renamed, as is happening elsewhere. She looks confused.
On the day we leave the city, we drive round the bay, passing the ghostly dome of a nuclear power station. One of Fidel Castro’s grandest projects, it has been rotting since the collapse of the Soviet Union. If you knock on doors here, they say you will meet nuclear physicists whose dreams died.
We drive on to Jagua Castle, a compact fort built in 1742 to protect the bay from buccaneers. It has a ghost, dungeons and a (very rare) working drawbridge, which I nearly break. Leaning on the battlements, where Cienfuegos began, it’s hard not to look in the direction of the reactor and shudder.
We head west, lunching on swordfish at Playa Giron on the Bay of Pigs where, in 1961, US-backed Cuban exiles tried to unseat the Castro regime, and staying at Playa Larga.
At last, west of Havana, we head back into the hills to arrive at the gates of an Arcadian dream. Las Terrazas was built in 1971 as a model community by the architect Osmany Cienfuegos, brother of the revolutionary hero Camilo, whose smiling face you can see next to Che’s, nine storeys high, in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion.
Poor families, who scraped a living on earth ruined by coffee and charcoal, were set to terracing the hills. Then they planted over five million trees. After the flatlands, Las Terrazas feels as welcoming as a goose down pillow. High on one slope is the Hotel Moka, built into the forest, a huge carob growing through the facade. Without international guests, the hotel has been requisitioned by workers from Mariel, a port that lies nearly 20 miles to the north.
Leonardo Pérez Reyes guides us through the settlement. His parents brought him here when he was four, right at the start. He greets everyone we pass with a joke and a laugh. A four-mile path takes us to Las Delicias, a former coffee plantation. The forest is thick. “Before the trees grew you could see both seas,” Leonardo says, meaning the Caribbean and the Florida Straits. He points out a tocororo, the red, white and blue trogon that is Cuba’s national bird.
We emerge from the forest at the old plantation, vultures lifting off from the ruins of the slave barracks. I am enchanted by Las Terrazas’ charm, but as with all of Cuba it is hard not to be touched by the effects of passing time.
That’s the thing about utopias, though. You can search for them, but you can never actually arrive.
How to do it
Havana Airport re-opened to commercial and charter flights on Nov 15. All other airports in Cuba are open for commercial and charter flights.
Everyone arriving in Cuba will have a PCR test; passengers arriving on commercial flights must self-isolate until they have a second PCR test with a negative result, but tourists arriving on holiday charter flights will have a PCR test on arrival and will then be transferred to their holiday resort. Cuba is on the travel corridors list, meaning travellers from the UK don’t have to self-isolate on their return. Before booking, check the latest situation with your tour operator and at gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/cuba.
Journey Latin America (020 8747 8315; journeylatinamerica.co.uk) offers a 10-day Trailblazer Cuba self-drive holiday from ￡2,290pp, with flights.
Top tips for exploring Cuba
Don’t drive at night. All the hazards that give daytime driving charm – pedestrians, carts, animals, potholes – become unlit horrors after dark. This is my most important tip.
Try the guarapo stalls. Sugar cane is Cuba’s main crop, and here it is crushed into a juice in front of you. Drink it fast because it can turn bitter in moments. Then be careful. Pure sugar, it can cause a serious rush.
Be careful of crabs. At dusk, on both coasts, land crabs appear. Brave little things, they turn to face the car with their claws extended. They can damage your tyres.
Drink ostiones if you dare: raw clams floating in a Bloody Mary mix, to which Cubans often add rum. It’s the real Clamato, the foul smelling “juice” my hungover friend Olly favours on fishing trips. I sipped warily at first, which is difficult with a glassful of snotty clams, but I’ve been yearning for it ever since.
Agree all prices beforehand (you probably know this one already).
Plan your nights. Normally, Cuba is a good place to wing it with homestays on every corner, but most guesthouses have turned in their expensive licenses. Use an operator (such as JLA) with a local emergency number, or you will find yourselves stuck in big all-inclusives for your whole holiday.
Look up. Cuba’s birdlife is incredible. Orestes “Chino” Martinez Garcia guided us in the swamps around Playa Larga. We saw todies, jacanas, hummingbirds, orioles, and many others among the laurel, gumbo-limbo and calabash trees.
Fill ’er up. You prepay for petrol in Cuba and the queue for the cashier can be curiously macho. Say how much you want (“lleno” for full). If in doubt, look helpless and the machismo will evaporate with everyone rushing to help.
“See Cuba before it changes.” Please don’t say this – it’s insulting to a people suffering from shocking shortages. Also avoid: “They’re poor, but they’re happy.”
Havana is one of the great cities, so spend a few days there. My favourite restaurants are Riomar, Corte del Principe and 5 Esquinas. For drinks El Del Frente, the Hotel Nacional gardens and, I suspect, the forthcoming BLECO. For music, the Museo de Bellas Artes, Diablo Tun Tun and… well, only a daiquiri will get that one out of me.