The triumphant revolution and an unexpectedly long visit to Guantanamo

---

Out of Trinidad and into Camaguey, the home town of our tour guide Aimara, we bicycle taxi toured with a local guide who told us of pirates, trouble with farming, infamous cheese and the many churches. We also visited a ration shop where locals still use books to track their purchases of government-subsidised produce. Our guide explained the (limited) types of products available and spoke of what life was like in Cuba growing up through the collapse of the Eastern block and the changes he sees coming to Cuba in the future.

After a whirlwind tour of Camaguey we were off to Santiago de Cuba. Santiago is Cuba’s second largest city, but it isn’t a pretty city and felt more crowded and unsafe than Havana that had felt like an amazingly safe place to travel around. It is also the birthplace and childhood home of the Castros so we got a further history lesson in the triumphant revolution. We visited the garrison of the 26^th of July’s botched attack and heard of how those captured were tortured and murdered by the government and strewn around the garrison with guns laid by them before the press arrived to cover the story (…some of the labels were still on the uniforms they’d put on the dead bodies to cover up the torture). We also visited the Santiago cemetery where many famous and rich Cuban are buried including the construction for the ‘unnamed soldier’ who our local guide described as ‘the bearded man’ and ‘the big, main man’ joking that ‘no-one knows if he’s already dead but once the construction finishes we might hear an important announcement’. (Though Raul Castro has softened the government’s hardline socialist policies since taking over from his brother, Fidel’s rules and influence is still ever-present.) A rooftop bar over the main square hosted of our night’s entertainment with a Tropicana show consisting of amusing costumes on average dancers with live vocals performing the evolution of Cuban dance through Indigenous, Spanish, slaves, afro-cuban, salsa, nightclub. It wasn’t the best show but for $7 (including 2 mojitos) we weren’t complaining, just giggling.

Our final city on the tour was Baracoa, a long drive to the Eastern most province via a lookout over Guantanamo Bay. Ridel, our expert driver up to this point, unfortunately had to demonstrate his mechanic skills when our bus decided to drop its whole transmission halfway up the hill to the lookout. We joked that it was too hot to walk up the hill but it would’ve been almost 50°C working in the bus and the lookout didn’t sell any water! Just beer and rum – it’s the Cuban way. Sadly, Ridel wasn’t able to fix the bus and much as a captain goes down with his ship, the driver must stay with his bus. (All tourism employees are government employed and stringent logbooks are kept so he couldn’t swap buses to accompany us any further.) It was sad to say goodbye to Ridel as he’d never been to Baracoa before but had heard about how nice it was and was getting excited to see it himself. A few hours later our rescue bus arrived and we were off again.

---