As these supposedly beautiful Belgian Ardennes have been buried in snow and ice for three months now, we headed off to Cuba for some long awaited sun worshipping cunningly disguised as 'training' for a grand cycling adventure later this year (and as a final and very generous gift from The Boy for the grand 3-0). After some deliberation we finally decided to take our own garage sale bought bikes, along with one pair of panniers for all our stuff.
We arrived in Havana looking like asylum seekers with two bundles of clothes wrapped in shopping bags and masking tape (ready to be decanted), and two enormous black bags clanking with pieces of bike, hoping and praying that we'd managed to remember all those little bits of metal that we're littering the lounge floor previous to our escape. After a day drunk with jet lag spent traipsing round Havana city centre, rebuffing endless offers of cheap cigars and rum at every turn, we fell back to our Casa (Cuban bed and breakfast) with a bag of beers and set off on what promised to be a long evening of bike building. I'd like to say we had them up and running within a matter of minutes, but the truth is whilst I was amazing at cracking open the beverages, munching on delightful garlic flavoured crisps and commenting on the progress with helpful hints such as "I don't think you're doing that right", I achieved little bike construction. That task was left soley to The rather sweaty, oil covered, Boy who gallantly battled away until dusk with uncooperative bits of metal that had never before been separated from one another.
The next morning, after checking our new panniers actually fitted the rack (I picked up from Sports direct on the way to the airport!) we were off before the sun rose, with me weaving uncontrollably across Havanas empty main roads as I came to terms with carrying two peoples luggage for two weeks on the back of my beloved 'Doris' Dawes bike. One might ask why The Boy, in all his newfound bike prowess wasn't carrying the bags for his dainty and delicate lady, his excuse was that his mountain bike couldn't carry panniers, yeah right, that and the fact I'm faster than him on hills and he wanted to slow me down! Anyway we managed a good mile before I wiggled round the corner at a snails pace to find him, once again covered in oil "fine tuning"or rather turning the wheel that had been attached backwards, and adding the brakes that had been forgotten! This was just the start of a very long day!
The flat 30k warm up cycle I'd been promised, turned into 80k, uphill in 30°C heat. A minor miscalculation, and six hours later we find ourselves burnt, exhausted, out of water, and collapsed under the smallest of bushes in the hope of an inch of shade. A few choice words later it was decided that the remaining 25k that had appeared on the last road sign, would be traveled by bus, car, lorry, horse and cart, whatever we could hail to get us to the next town before nightfall.
After 20 minutes of cursing and pushing the godforsaken bikes we came across a farmer about to start his milk delivery, and hauled our dust covered, sweaty, sunburnt and weary limbs onto the back of his lorry before he could even think about disagreeing. At times I did think we might have been safer dying of heat exhaustion, rather than being flung with metal casks of milk from the back of an industrial sized truck hurtling round the narrow unmade roads at some ungodly speed.
My worry was once again in vain as we arrived in Bahia Honda just in time to find a Casa (run, much to The Boy's delight by a mustachio'd lady), shower, eat enough potatoes and rice to feed a family of four and be in bed by eight.
Good job too, as we had to be back on the road again before sunrise the following morning to catch the 10.30am boat from Palma Rubia a short 40km (25 miles) away. After our early night we were fully recovered and managed to get to the boat with an hour to spare, in which time we decided to try out the famous Cuban Mojitos!
On the boat to the white sands of Cayo Lavisa
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