Daniele Somenzi's Cuba

Cuba It doesn't happen every day to get an opportunity to have 15 all-inclusive days in a resort in Cuba for just 400 €; even though resort holidays aren't my style, I accepted, better than still being at Cinquale seeing the same crossroads, the same streets, the same... everything!!!!! every single day!

I ask my travelling companion of the moment, Nicola, if he wants to join, but he can't, while Agnese, his mum, can, and since she's already done 2 trips with me, there's no problem.

The Lauda Air Boeing 767 flight lands at Camagüey, where they then take us for about an hour by coach to Santa Lucía, where they accommodate us in the 4 Vientos resort. Half board, breakfast and dinner at the buffet.

As I usually do, I've brought the Graziella, a folding bike easy to take on the plane. It turned out very useful on this holiday, since we're quite isolated, for example to reach the famous beach 4 km away. Agnese used it a few times too, to fraternise with the Cuban families in the nearby villages.

Once we were even invited by a family to lunch. They live in run-down houses and you eat the soup in broth with an aluminium spoon that scrapes your lips with the blisters it has.

The beach in front of the resort is ok but not super; the corals are missing, but the palms that ornament it look good.

One day with a friend I hire a car and we go to visit the city of Camagüey; here we see misery itself, the Happy Days Fonzie-style cars that only run because the wind blows; this is the success of communism. Everyone has everything "they say", while Fidel has millionaire villas and eats lavish meals every day; how come? Doesn't he preach communism?

We have problems filling up with the car; they don't want to give us any, then after a few phone calls we manage to get 5 litres; here petrol, with the embargo, arrives in small quantities and is rationed. A few days later with another friend, we borrow the lifeguard's motorbike, a run-down CZ 125; in exchange I give him a helmet I'd brought in my suitcase from Italy. But here too, besides still having petrol problems, a rather singular thing happens to us: the Cuban police stop us and ask for the motorbike's registration document. Having discovered there wasn't one, with a pair of pliers they remove the plate and keep it, saying that the owner, if he wants the plate back, must come and bring the document. So we returned to the 4 Vientos without a plate and worried that the lifeguard might say something to us; instead, he apologised to us and said he'd deal with the plate himself.

Go figure!!

Without means of transport here people really struggle; sometimes to do a few dozen km they hitchhike for 2 days; public buses are very rare.

The second-to-last day I take another hired moped, a 50 cc; it's so battered that the front wheel wobbles all over after the knock it took, and I go zigzagging. I see an old Russian single-engine two-wing propeller plane, which the Cubans use for tourism, but I wouldn't trust myself to go up in it; who knows what spare parts they use to make it fly. The last day of my stay, I take yet another ride on the bike, and I see just outside the resort a Cuban bricklayer, with one shoe on and one off, so I ask him what size he wears; 42, he says, at which I leave him mine; he needs them much more than I do, and I pedal inside the resort barefoot to put back on the other pair of shoes I had. I traded the bicycle too for little wooden objects; in 7 people had asked me for it over these 15 days.

The Lauda Air flight, before heading for Malpensa, stops at Cancún.

bye bye