Pedaling the heartland of Cuba

Road hazard, bicycling outside Viñales, Cuba. Road hazard, bicycling outside Viñales, Cuba. Photo: Janis Cooke Newman Photo: Janis Cooke Newman Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close Pedaling the heartland of Cuba 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

Here is Cuba in a nutshell. I’m straddling a Trek bike at an intersection in La Palma on the northwest side of the island, and passing before my eyes are a rusted-out Soviet-era Lada, a teenage boy riding a horse bareback, a 1957 Chevy and a man with a pig literally hog-tied to the back of his bicycle.

Part cliche, part undiscovered country.

Although it doesn’t seem like it, this muggy, 80-degree December day represents a historic first in the long and tumultuous past between two countries 90 miles apart. A day we’re marking by wearing fluorescent triangles on our backsides.

It’s the first official American bicycling tour in Cuba.

The question worth asking, and the reason I’m here along with 16 other Americans, is to find out if, at a time when U.S. travelers are yearning to know everything about this gradually accessible Caribbean country, it’s a place you want to see from the seat of a bike. Will pedaling at a slower pace help in discovering what for the most part is terra incognita to us?

And will biking be easier to do — and easier on the backside — when the embargo is finally lifted?

Roadway hazards

As we sit in the Havantur luxury bus, the windscreen of which bears a small flag of Che Guevara’s face, our Backroads guide, Lara, lists the particular hazards of Cuban cycling. First, the enormous number of potholes in the road. Second, the unexpected number of animals (cows, turkeys, pigs) in the road. Third, the fact that what these animals leave behind is, well, slippery.

We start off cycling past the tobacco farms and limestone outcroppings around Viñales, and two hours later, I am at that intersection in La Palma. What I realize — other than that the condition of the Cuban roads coupled with the suspension-less Trek cycle makes me wish I’d taken the gel-cushion seat cover Lara offered — is that being among the first tour of Americans to bicycle through this lush green and brown farmland is pretty amazing.

And not just to me.

Every time we round a corner, blond children run to the edges of their yards to wave at us. Women hanging up laundry stop to shout, “Hola!” Men standing in the backs of trucks take off their Yankees and Dodgers caps and swing them in the air for encouragement.

And yes, there are those 1950s cars — what Cubans call almendrón (almond) for their bulbous shape — chugging past every 10 minutes. Ancient sky-blue Chevys and bright red Dodges.

It’s not like cycling in another country — it’s like cycling in another time.

Delicate negotiations

Pulling this off has required as much diplomatic negotiation as occurred between Obama and the Castros.

While many of the restrictions on tour companies with people-to-people licenses have been loosened, because of the embargo, Backroads (a California-based travel company that organized the tour) can’t bring bicycles into Cuba, so our Treks have come from a British firm. Since the Cuban government insists all foreign tour companies work with local organizations, we’re being shuttled around in the Havantur bus, facing Che’s stern gaze.

Havanatur also provided our guide, Franklin, who despite gamely answering any question my fellow tour-goers throw at him, still hasn’t convinced a couple of them that he isn’t our government “minder,” as if we’ve landed in some palm-treed version of North Korea.

While biking was the focus of the trip, we’d spent three days getting acclimated — and getting a sense of how Cuba stands outside of time —while touring sites in and out of Havana (including stops that likely are required by Cuban officials).

One afternoon we drove through the baseball-crazy town of Matanzas, where every ice-cream-colored building bore the image of a bat-wielding crocodile, the logo of the local Cocodrilos team. It is the dream of every young “sports man” in Cuba to join a Major League Baseball team up north, our guide said — although it took a moment lost in translation to catch that “sports man” means “athlete.” No one corrected him.

We visited Escuela Vocacional de Arte de Matanzas, a government-run arts school where children are taught music, dance and ballet. Students put on what was essentially a school recital for us — but not before a 14-year-old girl (her pink-framed eyeglasses a contrast to her traditional school uniform) gave a welcome speech that mentioned “la revolución” five times.

A reminder that the Cold War is over, but Cubans are still fiercely proud of their history.

Joys of daily life

The second day of biking takes us through more towns in the countryside southwest of Havana, including El Rancho and Guanajay. Towns with covered walkways bordered by pink and blue columns, where it seems all that’s keeping those erosion-bitten pillars upright is the bright cheerfulness of their paint. Women, heads bristling with curlers, eat ice cream cones outside peluquerias (beauty parlors), and teenage girls in savage eye makeup bat their lashes at the helpless boys.

We pedal the pitted roads all the way to “Fusterlandia.” On the map, it’s called Playa Jaimanitas, but ever since artist José Fuster began covering every surface of the place with his riotously colored ceramic tiles, the town has turned into a Gaudi-esque fever dream. Mosaic mermaids recline on bus stop walls, and tiled crocodiles loom over rooftops.

It’s the only spot in Cuba where our cycling jerseys don’t stand out.

By our third day of biking, we’re riding through Havana—but it doesn’t feel like it. We fly down a two-lane road, hugging the river that separates the Miramar and Vedado neighborhoods, and it’s as if we’ve slid into a jungle with vined curtains and palmed canopies.

Without warning, we burst into the frantic streets, darting among the luxury buses and the hermit crab-like pedicabs, passing a government building with a graphic of Fidel on its facade — his campesino hat looking unsurprisingly like a halo — stopping only when we reach the glamorous decay of Old Havana’s crumbling colonials.

That night, in a courtyard open to the night sky, we’re given a lesson in the proper way to smoke a cigar. A lesson that includes the dubious advice that it’s healthy if the smoke remains in your mouth, and “the cigar is a gentleman, never crush him. Let him go out by himself.”

Cycling with the team

Having completed the day’s journey, we have dinner that night with a few members of the Cuban cycling team. These men — they are all men — ask us in Spanish where we’re from and how we came to love cycling. They assume we must love it, to have paid money to do it while on vacation.

When we ask them about their lives, they tell us about their jobs — window-frame installer, shoemaker. In Cuba, it isn’t enough to be on the cycling team. These men have spent the day riding with us, pedaling slowly up ahead on the Swiss-cheesed roads, glancing back to see if we’re still behind them.

It occurs to me that perhaps this is Cuba in a nutshell as well.

Part cliche, part undiscovered people. The latter will change soon enough.

These professional cyclists who also install windows and repair shoes — and now ride bicycles with tourists for money. It’s a Cuba that might be slipping into sync as the world changes gears.

Janis Cooke Newman is a freelance writer based in San Francisco and the author of the novel, “A Master Plan for Rescue.” E-mail: travel@sfchronicle.com

If you go

VITALS

Traveling to Cuba: The U.S. government’s rules for Americans traveling to Cuba are changing (mostly loosening) all the time. As of this writing, Americans cannot travel to Cuba strictly as tourists; they need to be going for one of 12 different purposes, i.e., educational, journalistic, religious. However, it’s now very easy to find a way to check one of the U.S. government’s 12 boxes. And if you’re traveling with a tour company, likely you’ll be on a People to People license (as I was), which means you’ll spend some of your time doing cultural activities, such as the arts school.

Currently, you have to fly to Cuba from either Miami or New York on a fairly pricey charter flight. That is expected to change in the coming months, once U.S. commercial airlines are granted permission to fly directly to Cuba.

Tour or no tour: Given the complicated negotiations — and all the players — involved in the Backroads tour, it’s not surprising that it wasn’t cheap: about $6,500 per person/double occupancy for an eight-day trip. Then again, we had access to people and places (more than fit into this story) you wouldn’t on your own. And this included nearly all of our food and drink. If you do plan to put together your own trip, I recommend the “Lonely Planet Cuba” guide.

What to pack: Imodium, packets of tissues (toilet paper is tough to find outside of hotels), hand sanitizer.

Where to stay

Melia Paradisus Varadero Resort & Spa: Varadero, www.meliacuba.com. An all-inclusive hotel right on the beach. If you’d like to avoid the hordes of vacationers “going Canadian,” stay in one of the Royal Service rooms; you’ll have your own more sedate pool, bar and lobby.

Hotel Moka, Las Terrazas: www.hotelmoka-lasterrazas.com. From the outside, this rustic hotel looks like a big white tree house. Inside, my room had a fair amount of mold growing up the walls. But it’s pretty much the only option in the biosphere.

Melia Habana: www.meliacuba.com. This Miramar neighborhood hotel has a business feel, but it does have reliable Internet, and is away from the increasing tourist madness of Havana.

Where to eat

Varadero 60: Calle 60 and Ave 3, Varadero. Stylish with Cuban ads from the 1960s, and the food (by Cuban standards) is pretty good.

El Romero: Rue Moka, Las Terrazas. Vegetarian, slow-food restaurant. Some dishes more successful than others, but a fabulous setting on a steep hillside.

Cafe Laurent: Penthouse, 257 Calle M, Havana. Gorgeous penthouse restaurant with a retro feel. Very good food — especially by Cuban standards.