Day 1: Brussels-Varadero  Day 2: Varadero- Playa Iacoba 99 km  Day 3: Playa Iacoba to Havana- 70 km  Day 4: HAVANA CITYTRIP 27km  Day 5:  Day 6:  Day 7:  Day 8:  Day 9: more later  Day 10:  Day 11:  Day 12: please mail me if you wanne see  Day 13: more !!!  Day 14:  Day 15: more later  Day 16:  Day 17:  Day 18:

Day 1: Brussels -Vararero (Cuba) Tuesday 4 november
Foreword:
Our trip to Cuba didn’t start on this very day. It all started with the idea that, if I had a chance to do procycling again the next season of 2004, I could not allow myself to go on a holiday for 18 days, just to ride around a car around a beautiful island, eat, lying on a beach and watching every sunset with a Cuba Libre in my hand.

Luckily enough I have this cool greatest girlfriend who came up with the idea to cycle around Cuba. She ‘s always been a great support the last four years, so she didn’t mind cycling a few kilometers, not knowing it would be 1150 of those, and I can assure you, Cuba is a beautiful country, but it surely is not flat!

Preparing the trip

First thing we needed were good bikes. And where else to find these but among the newest Flanders 2004 collection. Someone has to test  them, right?

We chose the hybride cross Pro touring bikes, without fenders and lights, trying to save some weight, we should have left some sweaters at home instead, as you will find out later on.

Next thing was the bags. As we would travel around with our luggage, we needed some good stuff. We chose Agu bags, not thinking it might rain in such a nice tropical country.

Anyhow, the bags are tested and approved.
After taking care of the rest of the luggage, we took of on a grey Tuesday morning, setting of for the sun, and a great adventure ahead of us….  
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So, Day one Tuesday 4 november     Top

We didn,t sleep much that night, preparing the last details, but during a 10 hour flight we would have pretty much the time to catch up that sleep.

We landed at 13.00 local time. At that time we were already up for 11 hours and the hardest part of our day was starting now.
The luggage and the bikes came through alright, witch is always a big relief at the start of your holiday!

We decided to take a cab to Varadero, the most touristic place to find all over Cuba. We had no choice because you could not leave the boxes from the bikes behind on the airport.

Since we had brand new bikes, we really wanted to use them for the return.
We paid 25 bucks, but being tired from the trip, we were glad to have found a cab which would take us and the bikes.

He took us to a soso hotel where we paid way too much for what it was, but we didn’t mind. We started taking out the bikes and putting them together, with a lot of interest from the hotel guards. That’s another thing about Cuba, there are guards everywhere.

After like ten minutes they came up with a mechanic to help us out. He probably never heard of a bike with 21 gears…
Well, I guess they all want to make some profit out of the tourism, especially in that place.

Later on we would find out that with the dollar tip we gave, you can buy 40 soft icecreams in Cuba.

We took a ride of 20 km along the coastroad, which was more a highway with busses and trucks zooming us by. Since there were no bikepaths and the sky looked like heavy rain coming in, we turned around. Enough for one day. Shower, food and a good night sleep would have to do the job to get us fit for the first ride, from Varadero to Playa Iacoba.

 Day 2 Wednesday 5 nov. VARADERO- PAYA IACOBA 99 km     Top

The hotel wasn’t cheap compared with the following places, but we were lucky in the morning to have a huge breakfast. We ate all we could and smuggled some stuff out for on the way.

Just outside Varadero we stopped to watch some guys playing baseball, considered a national sport. Professional sporters are considered lucky because they can go abroad, which is unusual for Cubans. Last thing we recently heard is that Cubans are prohibited to surf on the internet, unless they pay with US Dollars, imagine how rich our governments would be by now.

My girl lost a glove on the way, so we had to go back. Luckily it was only 5 km and it  was still there. On the way we ate some cheeserolls, a bottle of homemade coke, and a bottle of water for one dollar. We soon learnt we had to look for Cuban Pessos.

We rode over what was to be the longest bridge in Cuba, although we have our doubts about that. On the way we passed through Matanzas, a noisy, busy town.

We had to stop there to make a call home to say everything’s alright. We finally found a phone. My girl was waiting outside and somehow she managed to lose one of her glasses from her glasses. It just wasn’t her lucky day.

The problem was that she doesn’t see very well because they are special optical glasses.

So we lost quite some time in that smogged town. We couldn’t find superglue, not even normal glue. We did see a local market place where they sold huge cakes(50 to 40 cm), for just one Dollar!! They also sold second hand car parts. To repair cars with what they had, not much as we saw…

Since we lost a lot of time, we had to put up some tempo. Anyhow we arrived at the place where we had to start looking for the right way when it was already dark, which you will find out to be our specialty during the whole trip. We became specialists in finding places in the middle of nowhere in the dark, and we can assure you, Cuban roads are very dark after six!!( no streetlights!!).

We did find Playa Iacoba and it is not worth visiting it, but that was our last chance for that night. It looked like a typical holiday park, with a small beach.

Another thing when you go in the off season, all cabins in such places are or rented by Cubans for their own holidays, or closed for maintenance. Shit happens, so we found the last room, dirty and small ants everywhere, even in our bread!!

We think the room was used for party’s for the staff. 38 lousy bucks for the worst room, or no, we had a worse one at the end of the trip.

The breakfast was included, but was nothing more than 1 coffee and two dry toasts with nothing on them. Nothing like the day before. Insulted or not, my girl went to our room for the cheese and fruits she brought from home (hereby I apologise for laughing at her when she took those things with her…)

We took a morning swim, but the weather didn’t look so good. It rained a bit, but finally we would make it through the day without rain (until we had to look for a room of course).

 Day 3. Playa Iacoba to Havana- 70 km     Top

We soon learnt that the whole road along the northcoast was called the Via Blanca. And that it was the only road. Meaning it was used by cars as well as trucks, busses and…bicycles. You sometimes couldn’t see each other because of the smog from old trucks. And with the sun and sweating and little oxygen in the air, the smog was killing us softly. Amazing how you can bike on an autopista. Imagine this in your country.

We stopped on the way to Havana in Santa Maria for lunch on the beach.

The road to the beach was steep down, and while we were riding down (breaking our way down would be better), I saw my girlfriend wondering how  we were ever going to get up there again. She came up with the idea to try a few blocks further on if the hill was less steep and I was glad we did. Because of the luggage.

We had a quick lunch on the beach, not losing to much time.

We continued our trip to Havana. The weather was starting to look worse. We thought about getting out the rainshelters for the luggage, but that would cost us more time.

We arrived in Havana suburbs  at about five pm, and while we were checking out our maps, an old man offered to help us out. He jumped on his prewar bike and kept saying follow me. Since we were tired and couldn’t find any sign that said tunnel or ferry to cross the water, we took our chance. We followed him wherever he went, for like half an hour. But still no ferry or tunnel or whatever. The neighbourhoods he took us through weren’t getting any better and all of a sudden said  we were in Havana?

We gave him 1 dollar and he was pleased and so were we. We were in Havana!

And guess what happened, the city of Havana was so happy to see us that she started to cry. An enormous rainshower made us having to shelter for a whole hour. And that was just the hour we needed to find a casa particular before dark. Shit.. again. We had to start looking in the dark and in the rain. After a few addresses from the book we found a nice one (if interested we can give you names of places to stay, send us a mail and we will send them).

After hanging up the wet stuff, taking a shower and doing the paperworks for the casa, we were ready to meet the town of Havana. The city was getting ready for Carnival the next weekend, and you could feel the excitement everywhere. We took a cab that looked like an orange on wheels, anyone going to Havana should try this. Bicycle-taxis are also very popular, but since we were on the bike the whole time, we preferred this one.

We asked to take us to a nice private restaurant because we wanted to spend way too much money on bad food (as we found out).

Sorry about the 40 dollars on chicken and duck who were probably starving when they caught them.

We took a walk through old Havana up to the Capitol where we took an orange back home. It was a good bed, but which isn’t when you’re tired…

 Day 4 HAVANA CITYTRIP 27km

More soon............    

Again, if you have comment or questions,just shoot!!

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