Havana, at last

This time, the second time was the charm.

José Martí International Airport coasted into view, the city of Havana in sharp relief in the sunny background. This time I was headed for the main terminal, not the tiny old dark one reserved for arrivals from Miami. And this time, the journalist visa was firmly in my hand and I was ready.

This eight-minute podcast for Evening Edition, KOPN, 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo., shares a few highlights from my recent stay in Cuba.

By Tracy L. Barnett
March 22, 2010

PINAR DEL RIO, CUBA — I had been warned about the many hitchhikers who congregate around the highway entrances looking for rides; public transport outside the city is scarce, slow and overcrowded, and lucky is the Cuban who owns an operational vehicle.

Still, I was taken aback by the sheer numbers of people massed under bridges and along entrance ramps, and the paucity of vehicles on the highways available to pick any of them up. Some sat on suitcases or duffel bags and simply waited; the more enterprising jumped up at each passing vehicle and waved. “Pidiendo botella,” it was called – asking for a bottle – for reasons nobody could really adequately explain.

“Picking up hitchhikers is integral to showing your goodwill in a land where on any day, tens of thousands of Cubans stand by the roadside beseeching rides,” writes Christopher Baker in the Moon Handbook to Cuba. “However, there have been many reports of robberies, and I do not endorse picking up hitchhikers.”

How to reconcile these facts? I spoke to numerous Cubans and internationals before my road trip through the Cuban countryside. Ultimately, I decided to follow my instincts, and what began as an act of solidarity ended up providing friendly companionship, lively conversation and an entrée into the everyday lives of scores of Cubans, a genuine connection that had thus far proven elusive. Never did I feel the slightest threat. What was more, I found them guiding me to my destination along roads with few signs and sometimes ambiguous directions.

To be on the safe side, I stopped mainly for mothers and children, and they guided me through Pinar del Rio, to Las Terrazas on the first day and to Viñales on the second. They tended to be shy, and conversations were light; we talked about children, the hurricanes, the weather. Many had a brother or a son or a cousin in Miami. Many wanted to go there.

I had brought along a big bag of colorful gel pens to distribute to children along the way, and this became a great topic of conversation as I invited the children to choose their favorite color, and the mothers as well.

On the third day, I was to make the much longer drive from Viñales in the northwest, through Havana and on down to the Bay of Pigs in the southeast. Getting to the Bay of Pigs was going to be quite a bit more complicated than Pinar del Rio, I discovered as I studied the map. The closest city was Cienfuegos, so I decided to ask for directions there. First, though, was the two-hour drive to Havana. Instead of heading back south to the Autopista, I opted for the road that paralleled the North Coast, passing through small towns like Las Palmas and Bahía Hondo.

I started early, when the mists still draped the mogotes, the strange formations that tower over the landscape here. Nonetheless, people were already out on the highways. I picked up an elderly woman in front of her tidy wooden cabin outside of Viñales; soon she was chatting with a young woman we picked up in the next town, who she hadn’t seen since she was a baby. Neighbors caught up on the gossip; who was getting married, who’d had a baby, who’d left for the States or for somewhere else.

A mother and her two sons pointed out Mariel, a sleepy industrial city on the north coast, made famous by the 1980 boatlift incident, when 120,000 dissidents were allowed to sail away to the States. A smoky pall hung over the city, unusual along the otherwise sharp blue skies and waters of the North Coast. They made no comment as I got out to take a photo.

Finally we were in Havana, and I bid farewell to my last passengers of the morning as they instructed me to find a place to turn around and take the highway back in the other direction. I was confused, and the lack of signage among the cloverleaf-type formations connecting the highways only made matters worse. I lost half an hour looking for the highway to Cienfuegos. I was getting hot and hungry.

Finally, I saw a dapper old man sitting placidly, Buddha-like, on a concrete bridge and I stopped and rolled down the window.

“Yo soy Alberto Reyes Reyes Cruz,” he announced himself. “Soy un cristiano y un testigo de Jeovah.” (I’m a Christian and a Jehovah’s witness.”) Before I could pull away, he had latched onto the doorhandle and was giving me a salute with his Che Guevara hat.

“Do you know the way to Cienfuegos?” I asked.

“Do I know the way! Why, I was born there!” he exclaimed, shooting me a snaggletoothed grin. “I could find Cienfuegos with my eyes closed. I will take you there.”

Actually, I clarified, I was looking for Playa Girón.

“No problem! I know Playa Girón very well! I fought at the Bay of Pigs,” he assured me. “You can take me to Cienfuegos, and then I’ll show you the way to Playa Girón.”

What luck to find a veteran, I thought – I’ll be able to get an interview along the way. I congratulated myself on my good fortune and we headed down the road.

“Yo soy Alberto Reyes Reyes Cruz,” he informed me. “Soy poeta, músico y loco. Don’t worry – Jesus is my shepherd, and I always follow him, so I never get lost.”

He talked without stopping in his heavily accented Cuban, telling me stories about his 100-year-old grandmother and his 105-year-old grandfather, pulling a photograph from his pack to show me, and placing it in my guidebook so I would never forget him. It took so much of my attention to understand him that I forgot to watch for the all-too-occasional highway signs.

“Wait, are we supposed to turn that way?” I asked as one flew by. “No, no,” he said. “Remember, I was born in Cienfuegos. I could find Cienfuegos with my eyes closed. I fought at Playa Girón. Don’t worry. Now, didn’t I tell you Jesus is my guide?”

I was trying to do the math. Could he really have fought at the Bay of Pigs if his grandparents were still alive? I was dubious.

“No, I told you, I was 13 at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion,” he said. “I had my own gun, and I fought alongside all the rest of them. We Cubans, we are born warriors!”

This seemed plausible, so I let it ride, resolving to ask him more about it as soon as we were outside the city and the traffic cleared. He prattled on, telling me again about his elderly grandparents.

Soon, however, he was telling me of all the other important qualities possessed by Cubans, including their romantic ones. Wasn’t I married, and wouldn’t I like to be? he wanted to know. He had a beautiful house in Cienfuegos, and I could come live with him.

Time to pick up another hitchhiker, I decided, seeing a single woman standing under the next bridge.
“Yo soy Alberto Reyes Reyes Cruz,” he announced himself to the hitchhiker before I could say a word. “Soy poeta, músico y loco.”

“Where are you headed?” I asked the hitchhiker.

“Matanzas,” she said.

“Matanzas! Why, that’s on the North Coast!” I exclaimed, surprised.

“Yes, of course – you’re on the North Coast. We’re only about an hour from Matanzas.”

“But I don’t want to go to Matanzas – I want to go to Playa Girón! I wanted to take the highway south!”

“Oh, you passed that highway a long time ago,” she said. “The best way now is to go to Matanzas, and take the road south.”

I turned to Jesus-is-my-guide.

“You said you knew the way with your eyes closed! This is not the road to Cienfuegos or to Playa Girón – it’s the road to Matanzas! Why did you say you knew the road if you didn’t?”

“Ah, but don’t worry, everything’s for a reason,” he said brightly. “Look, here is a gift I brought you – it’s Baby Elián!” he pulled out a tiny plastic doll and installed it on the dashboard, together with a dingy rubber dolphin he retrieved from his dusty pack. “Viva Cuba Libre!”

Suddenly the bright blue sea flashed into view on my left.

I was furious. It was afternoon already, and Playa Girón was miles away. The sign ahead said Playa Varadero, the beach town that 90 percent of tourists head for, which has been described as a run-down Cancún or Miami without the perks. I wanted to see something different; I wanted to have a beach, yes, but also a story to tell.

Today I was scheduled to arrive early at Playa Girón, scene of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and morrow I was slated to tour Cienega Zapata, the wetlands and the crocodile hatchery, then head for Havana to arrive before dark. This mistake would cost me my long-awaited and tightly scheduled afternoon on the beach.

“There’s always enough time if you’re enjoying life,” Alberto advised. “Look, there’s the beach. Let’s go swimming!”

“No! I don’t want to go swimming! I want to be at Playa Girón! Why did you tell me you knew the way?”

“Oh, no, she’s angry,” Alberto stammered to the girl in the back, who was trying hard not to laugh. “She’s going to kick my backside!”

I drove on, scowling. The sands gleamed white against the multihued blues of sea and sky. Finally I decided to let it go. I was driving a car through Castro’s Cuba, a jewel preserved in a capsule of time, something few human beings have the opportunity to do. I was on the beautiful North Coast; I might as well enjoy it. I stopped to take a photo.

I was checking my settings when the girl burst out laughing. I followed her gaze to Alberto, striking a dramatic pose against the waves for my camera.

My next stop was at the highway control station, where I asked the police officer for directions to Playa Girón – no more trusting hitchhikers for directions. He jotted down the names of two towns: Jovellanos and Jaguey. When I reached Matanzas, I was to ask for directions those towns.

The girl bid us farewell and told me to be careful who I picked up. “He seems pretty harmless, but you never know about the next one,” she warned. I rolled into Matanzas, touted as the Athens of Cuba. I could see why as I followed the curve of the bay, the sun lighting up the white buildings along the water’s edge. Traffic, dilapidated warehouses and industrial towers made the city a bit less Athens-like, but the iridescent blue waters were so beautiful I overlooked them.

Brightly painted fifties-era cars wove in and out among wooden horse-drawn carts – not a tourist attraction here in Matanzas, but a daily form of transportation.

I followed the policeman’s directions, and soon we were headed to Jovellanos with another pair of ladies in the back seat.

“Yo soy Alberto Reyes Reyes Cruz,” he announced himself to the hitchhiker before I could say a word. “Soy poeta, músico y loco.”

He started telling them, too, about his grandparents, showing them the photo, and I began to wonder if his self-description was more literal than I had thought.

The women in the back seat were silent and worried-looking. Now I wondered if there were something in Alberto’s speech that I was missing. Perhaps he really was loco, and not in a good way. I began wondering how I was going to get rid of him.

“Don’t worry,” he said, as if he were reading my mind. “I have an aunt who lives in Playa Girón. She is dying of cancer. I need to see her. I will find her, and we can stay at her house.”

“You have an aunt in Playa Girón who is dying of cancer? Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“Well, you were angry with me,” he whined, making an exaggerated gesture to protect himself. I sighed, exasperated, and tried to make conversation with the ladies in back. “You seem a little stressed,” I said to the one whose pained expression was particularly visible in my rear-view mirror.

“I’m just tired,” she said. Soon, she asked to be let off on the side of the road, with no apparent destination in sight. Now I was truly worried.

Finally Meiky, the remaining passenger, spoke up. “Look,” she said, “I have to tell you, you are headed into a very dangerous area. There are crimes there all the time. That’s why that lady was so distressed. You shouldn’t go there alone.

“My son used to go to school there. He works in security, and he knows about these things. Why don’t you just come and spend the night at my place, and we can ask my son about it? We have a little rancho in the country – it’s a peaceful little paradise, you’ll see.”

“Yes, let’s go to the peaceful little paradise,” chimed in Alberto. He was getting nervous.

But I was adamant. I must arrive in Playa Girón tonight, I said. It was my only chance; the car must be returned tomorrow. I had an assignment. It was my work, and that was all there was to it.

“OK, then – come with me, and we’ll talk to my son. He is on his day off. He can accompany you, and make sure you arrive safely.”

I was skeptical. The police, after all, had told me to take this route.

“Sometimes the police are corrupt,” she warned. “I just have a very bad feeling about that place. Look, feel how cold my hands are – I just get the chills when I think about you going there alone.”

Her hands were indeed cold – and it was a hot afternoon.

“Listen, if you must go tonight, I will send my son with you. My son is my baby – I wouldn’t send him with just anyone. But I can tell you are a good person, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

Regardless of the danger that might or might not await me in Jovellanos, I was concerned about the time. It was mid-afternoon already, and the sun sets early in the tropics. The guidebooks, the rental agency and everyone else advises of the imperative to be off the roads by dark in Cuba, due to wandering animals, unexpected potholes and general lack of lighting.

I decided to go and meet her son, get his advice and go over the map together to scope out other options. Finca Buena Vista was indeed lovely, a tiny house on a hilltop amid the banana and coconut palms. Father and son awaited us: Fernando, a soft-spoken man with a gentle smile, and Eduardo.

Meiky’s baby was six feet tall, with a sculpted build, sun-frosted hair, a tattoo of a cougar on his shoulder and a very serious face.

“Yes, Jovellanos is a little rough if you’re passing through alone, and you could get lost; there are no signs,” he agreed.

“Can I even get to Playa Girón before dark?” I wanted to know. It was already nearly 3, and the sun goes down here before 7. It had taken me all day to traverse a distance that seemed to me on the map to be equal to what lay ahead.

“Oh yes, you can make it, the youth assured me. “I can go with you and show you the way. It’s no problem.”
“But how will you get back? I’m not coming back this way.

“It’s no problem,” he repeated. “I can always get a ride.”

His father was already helping him lace up his new sneakers for the road ahead. Alberto, who had already given his “poeta, músico y loco” spiel, was busy bonding with Fernando, showing the photo of his grandparents.

“I will stay here in paradise,” he announced. “I will stay with my brother Fernando.”

Well, there was one bit of good news. The family had agreed to keep the old man and take him up to the bus stop. I was trading up.

Apprehension crossed my mind as Eduardo emerged from his room with a new shirt and new, suspiciously low-hanging shorts and suspiciously new shoes. Where did this poor family find the money for new clothes? What if this was a setup? What if he had a gang in Jovellanos? What if they made their money robbing unsuspecting tourists and throwing their bodies into the Bay of Pigs?

I sat quietly and sipped the cup of Cuban coffee Meiky had made for me and watched. Eduardo was taking his mother’s blood pressure, worried about her headache. I wondered about my own.

Fernando was listening intently to Alberto’s stories of his grandparents. The birds sang in a tree outside the window. “Please, promise me you’ll take care of my baby,” Meiky said.

I took a deep breath, said a prayer and decided to put my trust in this family, and Eduardo and I prepared to leave.

Not before Alberto proposed that I give him a goodbye kiss and a few pesos for the road, however.

I laughed out loud. “You really are loco,” I said. “You should give me a few pesos for all the trouble you’ve caused me.”

“Oh no – she’s going to kick my backside!” the old man cowered behind Fernando. I confess the notion didn’t seem out of the question.

Fernando’s amused gaze met mine. “Don’t worry about anything,” he said. “We’ll take care of him.”

We headed off to the south, and Eduardo quickly put me at ease. He studied to be a security officer so he could support himself, he explained, but really he was a musician. His band played traditional Cuban and a fusion of Caribbean styles, he said. He was hoping to get a professional video of his band so that he could promote it, but the economy made it difficult.

He told me about going to school here in the countryside, where students were obliged to work in the fields in the morning while turning to their studies in the afternoon. It didn’t bother him, he said. “It’s a way we can give something back.”

Jovellanos didn’t seem dangerous, but it was confusing, with many twists and turns along the dusty streets on the way to the autopista. We crossed over and soon the Bay of Pigs flashed into view, a sparkling blue sea lined with a mangrove marsh.

We picked up a maroon-haired and very hip young woman about Eduardo’s age and we passed a sign denouncing the invasion and Yanqui imperialism. I asked them what they thought about it all.

“Those were other times,” Eduardo said. “We need to move on. It’s true that the embargo has caused us a lot of problems, but the government wants to blame everything on the North Americans – and it’s really not possible that it’s all their fault.

“We’re proud of the revolution, and we don’t want to give up our independence. But it ‘s time for a change.”

The girl agreed. “We don’t need to be enemies with the Yanquis. Those days are over. That’s just political nonsense.”

The current change of government has everyone a bit on edge, Eduardo said. “If you’ll ask anyone, you’ll find that most people feel very loyal to Fidel – probably 90 percent of the country are Fidelistas,” he said. “Fidel was always looking out for us – if it was a hurricane, he was there right afterwards, visiting every village.
“With Raul, it’s different; we don’t know what to expect.”

We passed through miles and miles of mangrove before reaching a sign that proclaimed, “Playa Girón: The Last Rout of Imperialism in Latin America.” Eduardo went to a good deal of trouble to help me track down an available guesthouse – the home of Sebastian Urra Delgado, survivor of the invasion – before taking his leave and heading for the bus stop. “I like to finish a job well,” he said.

I offered him $20 for his trouble, and he refused. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I was glad to help. If I were in your country and had a problem, I guess you would help me.

“Besides, I would have just been bored at home.” We exchanged e-mails and promised to stay in touch, and he made his way to the bus stop.

I made arrangements for dinner with Sebastian and his wife, Caridad: fresh lobster from the bay. Sebastian promised to join me and talk about his memories of the invasion.

I walked the dusty gravel streets, past tiny wooden houses and skinny dogs, chickens and goats and children, out to the Malecón, the dilapidated cement structure that had once served as a grand entrance to the town – built after the invasion had made the area something of an attraction, but fallen to ruin in subsequent years.
Nearly 300 people died here half a century ago, virtually all of them Cuban – both the Cuban-American invaders sponsored by the CIA, and the Cuban defenders of their homeland.

The sun was a brilliant ball of fire descending into the shimmering horizon. I sat on the edge Malecón and watched the colors deepen on the crystal-clear waters that lapped at my feet. Behind me, some tourists were getting out of a pontoon boat and heading up for their hotel.

Times have changed, indeed, I reflected, and they’re changing still. Like Eduardo, I wondered what the future holds for this island, trapped in time. The last red-gold sliver dropped into the sea, and I headed back for dinner.

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Above: An oxcart driver looks back to warn us of the “lake” across the road ahead.

Tobacco farms, curious formations called mogotes and a tranquil, timeless way of life were what I sought in the tiny colonial city of Viñales in Pinar del Rio – another stop along the Polo Montañez trail, being a favorite haunt of the beloved singer. I found all of that – and a lively nightlife, besides. Maybe a little too lively. Polo’s spirit lingers on, it seems.

Rolling into town I was guided to the bus station, where I coincidentally found the owner of my casa particular – Elio Sanchez, the watchmaker. He hopped on a bike and gestured for me to follow, and soon I was on my way to his charming home just a few blocks from the plaza. He prepared me one of the ubiquitous ham and cheese sandwiches as his wife showed me around. I had my own bedroom, my own bathroom, and my own side entrance to the patio and my room.

I decided to take a guided tour in the afternoon, departing from the city museum and heading off to a tobacco farm, a campesino’s home for a demonstration and a walk around a mogote. We took off on foot down a red-dirt road, past small clapboard homes and into the countryside: Paul, a tourist from London, and our guide, Jesús.

Jesús set out to be the best guide ever. He didn’t know all the answers but he was determined to get them; I made the mistake of inquiring as to the name of a tree with a bright red bloom, and as he wasn’t sure, he asked every neighbor along the way. “If I told you, I’d be a liar,” was a common refrain, producing gales of laughter all around. Finally we established a consensus: the tree seemed to be a piñon, at least according to the neighbors who claimed to know.

Along the way we passed every sort of transport imaginable; ancient 1950s-era tractors, motor scooters, rickety bicycles, horse-drawn carts, including one driven by a youngster in another world, apparently listening to an MP3 player in one of the oddest anachronisms I’ve seen. My favorite was the bueyes, or oxen. As Jesús and others have explained, during Cuba’s “special period” after the Soviets pulled out of Cuba, petroleum was virtually nonexistent, and the country was forced to return to ox-drawn plows in place of petroleum-powered tractors.

Modern-day industrial farmers didn’t have a clue and had to turn to their rural counterparts for help – like those here in Viñales, who never stopped using oxen. The advantages became evident; oxen didn’t break down and require new parts; they reproduced; they subsisted on grass; and, best of all, they didn’t compact the soil like the tractors did. Instead, their sturdy legs churned through the mud and aerated the soil. They were able to plow when the ground was still far too wet for tractors. And they were able to go places that tractors could never venture.

Paul and I were treated to an unexpected hands-on demonstration of the powers of oxen. Jesús saw a friend with a cart headed down the red dirt road we were walking and hitched us a ride. We clambered on back and bumped along delightedly until Jesús warned us that we were coming to a place where a lake crossed the road. I looked out ahead and the road was dropping away rapidly before our eyes. Suddenly, what looked to be at least a small pond loomed into view. Our oxcart driver continued, undeterred, and the oxen churned their way through a waterway deep enough to sink a tractor. We were truly impressed.

Our tour included a tobacco barn, with the fragrant leaves hanging in bunches, and an explanation of how each leaf is classified and sorted, dried and aged; a tobacco field, where we saw the tender plants with their delicate pink blooms; a visit with a guajiro family, Clara and Gerardo, a mother and son who catered to our vices with home-grown, home-brewed coffee and hand-rolled cigars (I declined on the latter, but Paul declared it excellent, and the coffee was divine).

I reflected on the irony of such an innocent-looking plant claiming so many lives. Gerardo clarified the source of the problem.

“Here in the campo we just smoke our own, hand-grown and hand-rolled cigars,” he said. “There are no chemicals, and we don’t inhale. Nobody gets cancer.”

Finally we got to walk back to a row of mogotes, the strange, Dr. Seuss-looking rock formations that tower over the valley. Some of these formations are home to endemic species that grow only on one or two mogotes, Jesús told us. We clambered up the side of a small one and witnessed a wild array of plant life: cacti, orchids, ferns, agave, and countless unidentifiable species.

We made our way back in time for a sumptuous meal of tender pork meat, black beans and rice and plantains, fruit salad and mojitos at my casa particular – the family had agreed to prepare an extra meal for Paul – and then we headed out to the Polo Montañez Cultural Center, the plaza at the heart of town where the late singer often played.

The seats near the stage were almost taken, but a group of young men happily invited us to join them. Soon Yosniel, a fresh-faced young man the age of my daughter, adopted me as his chosen dance partner. He was a fine dancer – it’s in their blood, he explained – and we danced the night away. I observed Paul receiving a salsa lesson from one of the comely dancers who had been onstage earlier. Good for him, I thought.

It wasn’t until many hours later that we discovered that Paul’s friend didn’t have a place to stay that night. She lived an hour away in another town. “So… how is it that you didn’t realize this before?” asked a perplexed Paul, who had been trying to explain to the woman for some time that he really, truly wasn’t interested. Finally he succumbed to her pleas and agreed to let her stay in his room – but their plans were foiled when the guard asked for her ID. She had none. Under Cuban law, anyone who stays in a hotel must have a state-issued ID.

We took her to the gas station, the only business still open at this hour, where she said she’d find a friend who was keeping her ID for her. This is where my suspicions were confirmed. The man who greeted her didn’t give her an ID, but rather scolded her and sent us on our way. She was apparently a jinetera, the women the guidebooks warn you about, who make their living from attaching themselves in this way to tourists – only this time, it didn’t work.

We took Paul back to his hotel, and now it was my turn. Yosniel, it seems, lived four kilometers away on a cowpath in the woods, and unless I could drive an ox, I couldn’t take him home. I’m a sucker for sad eyes, and I let him stay in my room. Only the next morning after he had slipped out early did I realize, when the owner of my casa particular confronted me, that locals are not allowed into the casas particulares.

“I could lose my business over this, if an inspector stopped by,” she scolded. “He should have known better.”
I apologized profusely and hung my head like a child. Oh, well, I sighed. Polo Montañez’ party-loving spirit seemed to chuckle nearby. I plugged in his CD and headed off into the morning, through the mist-draped mogotes to the North Coast.

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PINAR DEL RIO, CUBA — It had been two months since I packed away my car keys and began leaving the driving to otros. And as much as I’ve enjoyed traveling with the locals via camión in Mexico and guagua in Havana (regional words for bus), I’ll admit I felt a thrill when Ernesto at CubaCar Rental Service handed me the key to my grey Hyundai and wished me a buen viaje.

I headed first for the Malecón, the famous seawall that stretches the length of the city. The deep blue waters of the Straits of Florida stretched out placidly to the northern horizon; only yesterday they were crashing over the Malecón and flooding the grand, battered buildings along the waterfront. Today, however, skies were blue, and once I found the Autopista Nacional, it was smooth sailing.

My itinerary was altogether too cramped: two days in the western province of Pinar del Rio, with its charming villages, mountains and internationally recognized national biosphere preserves; a day for the Bay of Pigs, site of the infamous CIA-sponsored invasion in 1961, now a tranquil seaside tourist zone; and a day for Cienega Zapata, another internationally recognized preserve, this one in the coastal wetlands of the southern peninsula near the Bay of Pigs. Nonetheless, it was the time I had, and I resolved to make the most of it.

The first stop was Las Terrazas, high in the Sierra del Rosario Biosphere. I had booked a room at Hotel Moka at the heart of the community, the closest thing Cuba has to an eco-resort. I arrived just in time to catch a birdwatching tour with a guide named Miguel. The three-hour hike yielded some spectacular glimpses into the island’s many endemic populations and a fascinating story, besides.

Highlights of the hike included sightings of the green Cuban woodpecker, the spectacular Cuban trogon and some curious pod-shaped vines I’ve never even seen photos of before. But perhaps the best part was discovering that this lush forest was regenerated from devastated lands not so many years ago, with the help of the people who once helped destroy it.

The region was settled in 1792 by French refugees from the uprisings in Haiti. They created coffee plantations, which provided a good living for a few, for awhile. But eventually the coffee plantations failed, and as in much of pre-Revolution Cuba, local guajiros or country people became carboneros, manufacturing charcoal from the surrounding forests. It was hot and laborious work and eventually denuded the surrounding forests, but it provided the locals with a hardscrabble subsistence.

In 1967, as part of a far-reaching rural development campaign, the Castro government launched an ambitious reforestation project on 5,000 hectares of barren hillsides, hiring the local guajiros to plant trees instead of cutting them. The project was designed to build up the soil and reverse some of the erosion that had devastated the area, and the terrace-style plantings encircling the hillsides gave rise to the name of the model community that was developed in 1971 to provide workers with an alternative to the wood-and-thatch shacks that most lived in, scattered among the hills.

Las Terrazas contained a school, a clinic, shops and other services that were practically nonexistent in these parts before the Revolution. The picturesque red-tiled, whitewashed buildings ring a placid lake and rise up the piney hillside in terraced style. Some of the homes are artist villas, and some provide an opportunity for travelers to stay with the local families instead of at the hotel, a fact I discovered too late to take advantage of it. The hotel, however, is beautiful, and was well worth the splurge (about $100 a night).

Other highlights in the area include the pools and waterfalls of Baños del San Juan; the spectacular views from the ruins of Cafetal Buena Vista; and the home of the late Polo Montañez, creator of the platinum-selling album Guajiro Natural.

Montañez made his way into my consciousness – and my heart – in 2001 on a visit to Cartagena, Colombia, where he had just recorded his first album and achieved international fame. Just a year later, he was dead, victim of a car accident in the hills of Pinar del Rio. The simple poetry of his lyrics and the infectious rhythms of the Cuban countryside contributed to his meteoric rise to fame, which has not diminished over the years.

Montañez was discovered by a French tourist with connections in the music industry, according to his brother Luis, whom I met at his simple whitewashed house at Las Terrazas, now a museum. Luis provided me with a glimpse into his brother’s life as the child of carboneros, a lover of the Cuban countryside who had never even ridden on a plane until he was in his 40s.

I ended up buying all three of his CDs, which provided a beautiful soundtrack for the rest of my road trip. I wish I could share it with you now but my connection is just too slow here … meantwhile, here´s the tour, and a link to Polo’s MySpace page - with music, video and his last blog post.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

José Martí International Airport coasted into view, the city of Havana in sharp relief in the sunny background. This time I was headed for the main terminal, not the tiny old dark one reserved for arrivals from Miami. And this time, the journalist visa was firmly in my hand and I was ready.

I walked through the waiting area where I had spent a long, cold night on my previous visit to Havana, when I was denied entry due to visa problems, led to the main terminal to spend the night and shipped back, unceremoniously, on the next flight back to Miami. There against the wall was the red plastic bench where I had slept; there were the windows where customs agents had approved scores of travelers as I looked on morosely.

This time, I gave the bench a sidelong glance and took my place in line.

The interview was long and detailed – where was I staying, who was I writing for, who were my contacts, where was I planning to go, where had I worked before, the questions went on and on. But Julio Cesar, the official who interviewed me was smiling this time, reassuring me – “It’s just a procedure, don’t worry.” Last time I had received no such reassurances.

As I waited, two friendly dogs, a cocker spaniel and a black Labrador, sniffed curiously among the luggage and the travelers, tails wagging madly all the while. Their relaxed handlers clucked softly to bid them to return, and they responded – a marked contrast to the severe German shepherds, leashed to equally severe officers, whom I’ve seen sniffing about in U.S. customs.

Finally, Julio Cesar gave me a nod and a smile. “Bienvenidos a Cuba,” he said, and showed me the exit. I was elated.

My taxi driver, Pedro, was my first tour guide. A jovial gentleman with a deep sense of pride for his country, he explained to me the significance of billboards – like the one that portrayed George W. Bush and Orlando Bosch, a Bay of Pigs operative who was convicted of conspiring in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 people. Bush had granted a pardon to Bosch, leading to the words on the billboard:
“A nation that harbors terrorists is a terrorist nation.”

Pedro made sure that I understood the meaning of that billboard, and one that followed.

“You know about the Five Heroes, right?”

I wasn’t sure.

“There they are: René, Ramón, Tony, Fernando and Gerardo,” he recited.

I’d never heard it referred to in quite that way, of course, but I recalled the case: Five Cubans convicted of espionage in the U.S. and sentenced, from 15 years to life. In fact they had been spying, but not on the U.S. government; rather, they had infiltrated extremist right-wing Cuban terrorist groups that were plotting a bombing attack on Cuba. It was one of many attacks on Cuba that have gone unpunished, as U.S. policy is not to prosecute Cuban-American terrorists. When the “Cuban Five” uncovered the bombing plot, Cuban authorities contacted U.S. officials to report the conspiracy. Instead of convicting the terrorists, U.S. officials tracked down the five and convicted them of espionage. An international campaign for their release has been mounted, and more can be read about it at www.freethefive.org.

Along with Elián González, another face on a billboard as we entered town, the “Five Heroes” are prominently displayed around town. Elián, for those who may have forgotten, was the youngster who was picked up by the Coast Guard after his mother and 10 others died trying to escape to Miami on a boat that sank. Elián was given the chance to stay in the U.S. but opted to return to his homeland and his father.

Finally I arrived at the Hotel Nacional, the national hotel of Cuba, where I’m spending the first night. It’s really as grand and beautiful as they say, and has a storied history, which I’ll be writing about after I receive a tour.

Meanwhile I took a walk along the famous Malecón, the seawall I’ve dreamed of walking for years, where locals and tourists took the sun and watched the crashing waves and the cobalt-blue waters beyond.

I stopped for a simple but delicious lunch of fresh fish, salad and rice, served with a real Cuban mojito, at an outdoor café called Amigos de Fangio, named for the famous Argentine racecar driver. As I perused the collection of painted green tiles in front, most of them dedicated to auto or motorcycle racers, a local gentleman who called himself John, wearing a baseball cap with the letters “USA,” struck up a conversation. An organizer of a local motorcycle club, he had also organized the Fangio tiles project and explained to me the story behind each tile: the first woman to get her drivers’ license in Cuba, the first to ride a motorcycle, a beloved mechanic who, when he died, drew hundreds to his funeral.

I invited John to join me for a mojito and he regaled me with stories. He showed me his ID card, which identified him as Juan. “My parents named me John, and I was John until the revolution,” he explained. “Then with all the problems – you know, John Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs…. Well, it just wasn’t possible to have that name anymore, and the government changed it.”

He wanted to be sure that I knew, however, that he had no hard feelings about the difficult past between our countries. “We Cubans have nothing against the American people,” he declared. “It’s the government we have a problem with.”

He didn’t dwell on the politics, however, preferring to talk about motorcycles and vintage cars – two passions that reminded me of my father, I think the two of them would have hit it off, had they been able to communicate.

Tomorrow I’ll meet with government officials and get my credentials and make my itinerary for the nine days in Cuba that await me. Meanwhile, here’s a slide-show tour of what I saw on my first day.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Cuba, it seems, was not ready for me.

Definitely, I was not ready for Cuba.

It seems that getting a Cuban journalist’s visa is a great deal more complicated than I had been led to believe. My lack of attention to this particular detail led to a brusque reception by disbelieving bureaucrats, a long cold night in Jose Martí International Airport, and the first flight back to Miami.

It was a costly, embarrassing and extremely painful lesson, but here’s what I learned. I’m sharing the story in the hopes that you will learn from them.

(1) Never believe your travel agent when she tells you she’ll handle the visa for you. Even when your agent works for one of a handful of companies licensed to take U.S. citizens to Cuba, and she knows you’re a journalist, and you’ve already received a specific journalist license from the U.S. Government, faxed to her at her request, and when she’s told you that you can just pick it up at the counter along with your ticket. Don’t believe her to be an expert in these matters. She is not.

In this case, she was a Brazilian native recently hired by the company – a nice lady who feels very badly about what happened, but in no way knowledgeable about Cuban journalist visas, which are notoriously hard to procure.

(2) Don’t assume the official-looking Spanish-language documents in your packet are what you think they are. Had I inspected the documents I was given instead of rushing off to the gate post-haste I would have noticed that there was no visa; only a swine flu screening document, an embarkation form and a customs form. At that point I might have had some options. But I didn’t notice this until I was in Havana, at which point my options were extremely limited.

(3) Don’t rely on the guidebook, which devotes many pages to explaining how to get U.S. permission to travel to Cuba, but only a couple of paragraphs to the Cuban journalist visa – one of them stating that if you come in on a tourism visa, you can request a status change and get a journalist visa in about a week. This guide is not written for journalists and while that may or may not be true, it’s no indication of the ease or difficulty in getting a journalist visa to enter the country in advance.

(4) Don’t do international travel – particularly to a country that has been estranged with your own for several decades – on two hours’ sleep.

(5) Blogging, tweeting, facebooking and texting family and friends are optional. Mindful attention to logistics is not.

Bruno Henríquez, a solar energy expert and science fiction author I was scheduled to meet, consoled me via e-mail when he received my bad news.

“Here in Cuba, we have a saying: ‘Lo que sucede, conviene.’”

Roughly translated: What happens is the best thing.

It’s a tough one to swallow at the moment, but it comforts me to think that in the long run, Bruno’s wise words will be made manifest.

Back home in Houston, I’m investigating my options. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, it’s time to turn this fiasco into the best thing possible.

Today I will follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, Che Guevara and Celia Cruz to the irrepressible rhythm of the Cuban son – emanating from Cuban human beings, not my CD collection or a cover band in downtown Houston. Far from the Bayou City, I’ll savor the sunset breezes on the Malecón, the famous boulevard that stretches the length of the city along the Bay of Havana. As many a tourist has done before me, I’ll sit at Hemingway’s favorite bar and have a mojito in his memory.
And while I will embrace the cultural magic of this legendary land, my journey goes beyond culture to something more essential, something universal and urgent.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Salopek recently articulated my thinking better than I could have. Salopek won the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award last month from Colby College, and like a modern-day Horace Greeley, he uttered some sage words of advice to young journalists in his acceptance speech.
“I would advise any ambitious young reporter today not to head to Washington or to London to launch a career but to light out for the South, because that’s where the global narrative is rapidly taking shape,” he said.
Salopek, for those who may not know, is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who was captured and held captive in Sudan for a month while reporting a National Geographic cover story on Africa’s Sahel region. One can only hope that his words will inspire a fraction of the shift in the national zeitgeist reflected in the famous 1800s phrase attributed to Greeley, “Go West, young man.”
I am no longer a young reporter, but lighting out for the South is exactly what I am preparing to do. Over the course of the next year, I will be traveling through Latin America, reporting on the important and innovative work of world-changers at the grassroots. Here is where the passion and the color and the sazón of the Latino people finds its nexus with what’s been called the most urgent issue of our time: remaking society in a way that will avert an ecological catastrophe.
Citizens of the Global South have too often been portrayed as victims, villains and bit characters in the global narrative playing out around us. We see the images of the distressed and dismayed, buffeted by yet another catastrophe. We hear about the druglords and narcotraffickers, the swine flu outbreaks and the hordes of undocumented immigrants besieging our borders.
What I have seen in my travels in the Global South is a sharp contrast. Yes, there is suffering, but as Salopek also noted, there is great joy. He describes Africa, with all its entrenched poverty, as one of the happiest places he’s been. Paradoxical, yes; but paradox is the great crucible of the soul, and therein lies the story I am about to tell.
My Global South is peopled with heroes and heroines, men and women who face down their fears and the formidable challenges that stand in their way to produce meaningful change. It’s also peopled with ordinary folks who are tackling the same challenges we are, but from a different angle.
My Global South is working quietly to create a model for a future that is ultimately more sustainable than the one that we here in the overdeveloped world have created, and we have barely noticed.
In the year ahead, as humanity wrestles with what may be the greatest challenge of our times – re-creating a society and a sustainable way of life that is consistent with long-term planetary survival – I will be giving voice to some of these unsung world-changers in the pages of The Esperanza Project, a green bilingual (and ultimately, multilingual) news portal for the Americas.
Esperanza is the Spanish word for hope – a commodity seemingly in short supply these days. With the rapidly approaching Copenhagen conference, climate leadership is hard to find – unless one looks south, where Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest carbon producer, is pledging to cut emissions by a third; Cuba, which has turned crisis to opportunity with one of the hemisphere’s most sustainable infrastructures; and mega-metropolises like Mexico City and Bogotá, with green initiatives that go far beyond what most U.S. cities have attempted.
I’ve already begun the reporting on this project with an October trip to Mexico, where young professionals in Guadalajara are putting their bodies on the line for a more sustainable city, and in Mexico City where a sprawling, 30,000-person complex is making the conversion to an ecovillage.
In Cuba, I’ll witness the creative responses to the crisis that followed the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of its main source of petroleum. The country was forced to rapidly rethink its agricultural, energy, transportation and health care systems with a fraction of its previous oil supply, and in a process borne of necessity, created some of the world’s most sustainable cities.
And in January, after packing up my belongings into a storage locker and saying goodbye to my family, I’ll be hitting the road on a yearlong southward journey seeking and training collaborators for a new media project.
On this news network, Latin Americans are the protagonists of their own narrative, and one that we here in the North would do well to follow, as there is much to be learned from them. We’ll be using all the tools of the digital age to tell their stories: video, photography, the new social media and, yes, the good old-fashioned written word.
Jorge Luis Sierra, an award-winning investigative journalist from Mexico City and a pioneer in online media himself, has signed on as The Esperanza Project’s Spanish-language editor, giving the project greater depth and an exciting edge. Patricia Martinez, an environmental journalist from Guadalajara, Alejandro Manrique, an investigative journalist from Colombia, and Tami Brunk, an environmental writer based in New Mexico, are also among our collaborators.
We are looking for contributors from all over, and you can be one of them. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter, subscribe to our RSS feed or receive updates in your e-mail. You can post relevant stories in the newsfeed, contribute to the discussion in the comment fields or even write stories of your own, if you feel so inspired.
I hope you will join the hemispheric conversation that is about to begin at www.TheEsperanzaProject.org. Click around the site, share your thoughts, forward it to your friends. This is how a new online media project is born, and you can be a part of it.
Tracy L. Barnett, www.tracybarnettonline.com, is an independent journalist based in Houston. She is a blogger at The Huffington Post and founder of The Esperanza Project.
Paul Salopek’s inspiring speech, delivered last month upon receipt of the Elijah Lovejoy Award, is available in podcast here.

Photo by ZedZap (Nick) on Flickr