We walked to the Cubacar office, completed the paperwork, paid the $566 cuc, in cash and picked up the car. Just as we were getting to grips with the Hyundai Accent there was a tap on the windscreen and there stood Delfin, beaming. Feeling guilty that we had not gone back to his Casa, we managed to avoid a discussion about accommodation and he wished us well with the rest of our travels. Before we could leave the city we first had to find our way back, through the almost exclusively one-way traffic system, to the Casa to collect our rucksacks; and so, feeling very pleased with ourselves for not getting lost (possibly more luck than judgement) we started the somewhat stressful process of making our way out of the city and headed for Bayamo.
Any city is a nightmare to drive around when you don’t know where you are going and Cuba is no exception. Most of the streets are one way only because they are very narrow but then you have to dodge around the many pedestrians, taxi bikes and horse drawn buggy taxis while trying to ignore the impatient horns of the drivers who do know where they are going and want to get there in a hurry. Fortunately, most towns do not seem to be that big. The roads between the towns are, contrastingly, quiet with very little traffic and are surprisingly well signposted. All of the roads are, however, fairly diabolical to drive on and desperately require a comprehensive program of repair. Bus rides are bumpy but the smaller wheel base of an old car really brings this home!
Almost as soon as we had left the main part of the town we were presented with hitchhikers waiving us down. We really had no choice but to ignore them until we felt a little more comfortable with our new environment but we soon found we were unable to pass all of them by and started our own little, free, bus service picking up one or two people here and there, dropping them off a few km’s down the road where they requested with a tap on the shoulder of the driver and a ‘pare aqui’, pointing to the spot before picking up some more.
When we arrived in Bayamo we had the problem of finding the accommodation that had been arranged for us by the previous ‘landlady’. I was in the driving seat leaving Paul to navigate from the map in the guide book; a map that only printed the names of a few roads and the few road names we could read from the car, occasionally having to get out and walk right up to one before ascertaining any information. Add to this recipe that many roads have two names but do not necessarily mention this on the label and the end result is that we got lost. We ended up a facing the entrance to an area in the centre closed to traffic and a security guard beckoning us towards him. My Spanish is good enough, just, to ask the questions, sadly it is not good enough to understand the answers; especially when they are spoken very rapidly (the Cubans do talk very fast) and the words not pronounced properly.
He then proceeded to try to sell the merits of a particular Casa ignoring our attempts to convey that we already had a reservation and motioned us to park the car and follow him, which we did. The Casa Particular that he took us to understood and taking the piece of paper telephoned for us. Shortly afterward a lad turned up on a pushbike and we then followed him to the address. Jose, the landlord, has a good command of the English language and was very helpful and he and his wife were very
friendly and the only people to have answered our ‘thank you’ with a ‘por nada’ meaning you are welcome.
Bayamo is the capital of Granma Province and is often referred to as: ‘the Cradle of Cuban Revolution’ and’ the Birthplace of Cuban Nationality’. One of the original seven Spanish cities in Cuba, it was established in 1513 and now has a population of around 130,000. This was, apparently, a stronghold of early revolutionary Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who freed his slaves and declared war against colonialist Spain. The city exchanged hands several times and was once burned to the ground by Cuban rebels as the city was being sacked by the Spanish. http://www.cuba-junky.com/granma/bayamo-home.htm
We only spent one night; a nice place to live but not a lot to offer the tourist except a visit to the mountain camp used by Castro and his army. We had planned to include this ‘experience’, that is, until Jose explained all the cost involved! We could have driven to ‘base camp’ but then we would have had to hire transport to take us up into the mountains, Pay $30 cuc each to get into the national park and then hire a guide to show us the way! All in all, we felt that $100 cuc was just too much to pay for a walk in the mountains! So we didn’t! But it does have an ornate shopping precinct with artistically sculptured lampposts and had the first shops that we have seen that actually looked inviting;
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