Kristin and Drew

We´re now in Holguin the 3rd largest city and near the birthplace of Fidel. We arrived after a grueling 40 mile ride with 20mph headwinds. Happy to be here! We spent 2 nights in the Sierra Maestra national park and hiked to the Commandancia de la Plata, where Fidel, Che, et al (kinda Valley Forge or Gettysburg - Cuba style) managed the revolution in 1959, we saw the huts they lived in saw the location of Radio Rebelde. It was a great hike in wonderful scenery with great history. Our guide was wonderful. He was probably in his mid-thirties and had lived in the village of Santo Domingo (pop 600) all his life, the furthest from Santo Domingo he has travelled was to Maceo Bartolome, 50 miles away. Yet he speaks the best english of any ... read more

so says drew during an epic ride along the carribean coast as our chains start creaking as we crank away... I am not really sure when our last update was...so i will give a quick update since leaving havana for the second time...and this time i am able to write a bit more because we finally stopped being cheap and paid for a full hour of internet....EACH! about a week or so ago we left havana on an overnight bus to Santiago...13 hours to be exact..with nothing more than REMIX cookies...they are like cream filled cookies...but better! we´ve eaten over 200 cookies thus far....and i am finally starting to get sick of cookies! Upon arriving in Santiago at 6 am with our bikes (and it´s still dark) we jumped on and went to find a house ... read more

lo que sea.-... that is what the cubans say....whatever... yesterday we had our first taste of REAL cuban life. well, kindof... we awoke in beautiful vinales and headed out on our bikes on a gorgeous ride down to the nearest city...pinar del rio... the ride was short and did not take much time... we were preparing to make our first real adventure...hitchhiking with our bikes back to havana...with hopes that we would return quickly and get ourselves across the country with our bikes to that we can cycle the granma and santiago de cuba provinces before returning. well, first stop the bus stop... we ask, any trucks heading out to havana today...possibly we could jump on back with our bikes? nope! so....we ride out to the autopista..(don´t picture route 80 here)...we´re talking more like a road ... read more

We're off to the East now, some photos are up. Great trip so far. ... read more

well...since time is of the essence this will be scatterbrained and short.... I am posting a second commentary of our trip so far..I have no idea what drew wrote, so forgive me if there are any repeated adventure stories! let me first begin with the absolute joy of traveling on a bicycle. It is a completely different experience altogether, aside from the fact that everything you own is strapped to the bike and when you hit a hill it feels more like a brick wall. This is SSOO cheesy to say but traveling by bike is experiencing the journey. The greatest moments in cuba so far have been in some small town either snacking or changing a flat (the only two being drews...) not necessarily in our destinations... So, we enter this adorable SMALL town off ... read more

Hi guys Just wanted to update you guys on the trip so far. The internet cafe´s have been few and far between and the connections have been super slow. We´ll see if the blog works out. Terrie, I hope your trip back to Oz was good. We´ve been in Cuba a week now. We spent our first 2.5 days in Havana getting oriented, seeing sights, and riding around the city. We then left Havana on the 5th and road 50 miles west to Las Terrazas a town on a lakeside forest reserve, beautiful spot. The next day we rode southwest to San Diego de los Banos a cuban ¨spa¨ town, the town was beautiful but the spa was old and sulphury smelling. We stayed at a farmhouse 2kms out of town. On the 7th we rode ... read more