Havana – Viñales – Playa Larga – Trinidad – Santa Clara – Varadero – Matanzas – Havana
20 days | no cycling
And then suddenly I’m “a backpacker”. I feel naked without my bike. How does this work?
I arrive in Havana as a broken man. I’ve been barely sleeping on a bench in Teminal 2 in Mexico-City and barely sleeping in the plane. The adrenaline of arriving in a new country wakes me up though. I have no clue how things work here. I get some money from the ATM at the airport, but have no idea what the currency ratio is and later I find out I only got 20 euro worth of cash. I don’t feel like the trouble and the scams of the buses and taxis here and I have plenty of time so I decide to start walking my way out of the airport. I immediately find myself between grey flats with peeled off paint. When I arrive on a bigger road a bus stops right in front of me. I get in. There is no way to pay a fee to the bus driver because everybody is cramped into this old bus, there is absolutely no way to move. By the way, I see nobody paying so maybe this is just the communist “free for all” variant of public transport. By luck the bus drives almost all the way to the Casa Particular that Marleen has booked for our first nights. They will arrive tomorrow.
Our Casa is in the middle of downtown Havana. After a shower I go explore. I decide to just sit down on a random corner in this labyrinth of small alleyways. There is so much happening on the streets here.
Bicycle taxis pick up old grandmas with grocery bags, vegetables and fruits are being pushed around on handcarts and people are standing in line to enter a shop whilst loudly chatting or discussing with each other. Later I hear that the big queue is lined up for a shop that’s currently selling cooking oil.
I don’t feel comfortable yet. I feel that with my white skin and my camera around my neck I’m being watched, people are wary of me and I have the feeling that I get some dirty looks. In every way I feel that this is a special time in Cuba, the inflation is gigantic, everybody is struggling to get food on the table. And on the other side the tourists are comfortably walking into way too expensive (for Cuban standards) cafeterias and bistros for a nice brunch or dinner. I feel like a disaster tourist. In the night, my first impression of Cuba does not get better. I eat the most terrible microwave pizza on the streets. I get talked to almost constantly, “Hello my friend, where are you from? The Netherlands? Ah! Frikandel!”. They walk along with me and then after a while they want something from me. To change money, if I wanna buy cigars, marihuana, a hooker. Not nice. I am weak and the city knows it.
The monumental buildings with peeled off paint, small alleyways with laundry on the lines and old Chevrolets make up for a lot. I text Jeroen and Marleen my first impression of Havana and unintentially worry them a bit.





“Ultimo?” is a frequently heard question on the streets here: who’s last in line? You queue everywhere here: supermarket (which is more like canned food on display), phone shop, nail salon, icecream shop. That is, if it’s not for tourists. There is such a strong division here between locals and tourists and it’s simply because of the prices, locals simply cannot afford to have lunch somewhere for 10 euro. Examplary is my question to a local where the locals go for a beer tonight (it’s friday night after all..), she answers that locals don’t really go for a beer these days.
I decide to take a shot at blending in with the locals: I will try to do groceries in a supermarket. I want to buy some beers and maybe breakfast for when Jeroen and Marleen arrive tonight. Of course there is a line. I stand in line for an hour and eventually when I get closer to the door, the security guy starts to collect Cuban ID cards. When it’s your turn he calls your name and you get your ID card back. I don’t have an ID with me, so I want to cancel the mission, but the lady next to me gestures that I should just keep my position in the queue.
After a while I can enter. The supermarket does not have a lot to offer. Mostly canned food, I can’t even find bottles of water. They do have beer though and I want to pay at the cashier. But then it turns out that you can only pay in this shop with a government established currency called MLC. Mission failed after all.
The next queue I line up for is for dinner. Just after I get assigned a table the lights go out in Havana: my first blackout and certainly not my last. In the evening I decide to go to the Fabrica del Arte which a lot of people were talking about. A classy venue with art on the wall, performances at different stages and fancy cocktails. I have a good time, but then again the lights and music go out due to a blackout. Time to get back to the hotel. At 02:00AM I see a taxi stop in front of the Casa where two very tired, very familiar faces get out of the car. We drink a beer on the roof terrace to celebrate our reunion. It feels so great to see my brother and little sister again after such a long time!



After a good nights rest and a good breakfast we wander around the picturesque alleyways of downtown Havana. It’s great to catch up with my brother and sister. We drink a mojito in the old pub of Ernest Hemingway where a live band is playing Buena Vista Social Club‘s song Cha Cha over and over again. We stroll some more.
Money is a thing here in Cuba. Let me try to explain. Getting money from the ATMs is a no-go because you only get 120 Cuban pesos for one euro. You can pay with euro’s and American or Canadian dollars everywhere here, that’s why basically all tourists are coming to Cuba with a big stash of euros/dollars, so are Jeroen and Marleen. However having some pesos as well comes in handy sometimes for small purchases. The rates on the black market / on the street are much better than from the ATM, but you have to be careful not to get scammed. I met a Cuban girl yesterday that works in a lunch café and she told me she can exchange some money for us, we will get 160 Cuban pesos instead of the poorly 120 from the ATM.
When I text her to make the transaction she is not available, but I can “go to a friend of hers which is also willing to do the exchange”. I guess everybody is willing to get euros because it is a much more stable currency than the Cuban peso. Anyway, I go to the house of this friend with 4 notes of 50 euro. When I get there I am greated by a friendly looking old lady and her husband. I go inside the apartment, get a glass of water and be told to sit down on the couch. I don’t get it, because I think this would be a fast transaction: I give you the euros, she gives me the pesos. However only later I understand that this is going to take a while. Two hundred euros means 32.000 pesos and she has a lot of bills of 20 and 50, that means we have to count let’s say a thousand notes. We start counting the bills. Sometimes we forget the amount of notes we’ve counted already for a certain staple of 10.000 so we have to start again. After we’re done with the pesos I give them the 4 notes of 50. It doesn’t need a lot of counting.




A beautiful old Chevy is waiting for us the next morning, suitcases tied up on the roof. Together with some other tourists we are being transported to Viñales by collectivo today. A little bit cramped in the back, but a beautiful ride awaits us. We’re driving alongside the green tobacco fields. The road is supposed to be a highway, but we see many users that would not been allowed on the highway in the Netherlands: horse and carriage, bicyclists, mopeds. A joy for the eye. We make a touristy stop at one of the tobacco plantations. A guy explains us about the art of growing tobacco and making cigars from the leaves. Of course this stop is only to sell us cigars. I’m annoyed. I paid to get brought to Viñales, not to get dropped off at some tourist trap. I notice that I’m struggling with the dependency I have as a backpack tourist. With the bike I go wherever I want, as a backpack tourist I am dependent on where they bring me.
We sleep in a beautiful cottage in the Viñales valley. We have lunch at a mirador and have the best view of the UNESCO protected valley.
Limestone rock formations stick out of the otherwise flat tobacco field sprinkled valley. We retrieve to our cabin, to drink piña coladas in our small pool, read and chat.
The next day we decide to rent bikes to explore the valley a bit more from up close. But first things first: we are playing against Senegal for the World Cup in Qatar. We cycle to the town of Viñales and find a café that’s broadcasting the game. We win 2-0 but it is with the narrowest of margins. After lunch it’s time to get on our mountain bikes. After a quick visit to a cave we turn into an offroad track to circle around the valley. When the offroad mountain biking becomes a bit too much for my sister we make our way back to the village for some well-deserved mojitos.











Transportation day! Our longest drive in a shared taxi with a surprisingly smooth stopover in Havana. Approximately 350km further we are back on the Carribean See in Playa Larga. Another Casa Particular is waiting for us and basically these are just family houses with a room for rent. We are 50m from the beach and it is absolutely stunning. Palm trees, white sand and clear blue water. I know this is getting repetitive, but yet again we treat ourselves to mojitos on the beach. At night we find a perfect pizza tent in the town that sells pizzas for 50 eurocents. The reggaeton music blasts through the speaker and some of the customers can’t help themselves but to give a twerk show.
The next day it’s time to snorkel and we need to get 30 minutes south from where we are. I’m tired of paying the top prize for taxis to get us from A to B, so I tell Jeroen and Marleen that I want to try to do this the Cuban way. Everywhere in Cuba there are people just standing next to the street holding their hand up. Because everybody that has a car and is on the road is willing to take anybody into the same direction. Basically everybody is a taxi driver. We walk onto the main road and go stand next to the locals holding our hand up. I talk a bit with people left and right from me and there is also supposed to go a bus into our direction. We wait one hour. The bus never shows up. The people I’ve been talking to go back home. I guess the bus is just not coming today and they will try again tomorrow. The problem for us is that we want to go snorkeling today. Marleen is getting annoyed, she wants to lie at the beach and not stand hours on the side of the road in the burning sun. I get that. By now I’ve thrown overboard my wish to travel like the locals do.
However, we can also not find a touristy taxi. An hour later we finally find a taxi that is taking us to our destination. So much for local transport.
We first visit a so called cenote, a hidden waterhole in the jungle. After that we snorkel at the reef on the beach across from it. Jeroen has been smart enough to bring a snorkel set into his cabin (!) suitcase. When we put on the glasses and look underwater we immediately see hundreds of beautiful tropical fish surrounding us. The coral is amazing.
On the way back we manage to travel the local way. Because everything closes at 5PM and the guy that does the entrance to the cenote, the guy that rents beach beds, the guy that runs a souvenir shop and the people from the restaurant also need to take the bus back. We just follow their lead. Everything in this bus rattles, the windows, the seams of the windows, the roof, the chairs. During the ride sometimes the bus makes a sudden stop followed by some shouting with people outside, some goods are being delivered through open windows before the bus starts moving again. We get back to the city and crave a snack, however we stumble upon a Cuban phenomenon: the churros-shop does not have churros, the ice-cream-shop does not have ice-cream and the sandwich-shop does not have sandwiches. Maybe tomorrow.
We have dinner on the beach, in our t-shirts and swimming pants, between the palm trees and our feet playing with the grains of white beach sand. A guitarist plays Guantanamera and life cannot be better.













Another collectivo brings us to the picturesque town of Trinidad. It seems we are the only people in this shared taxi, so we ask the guy if he can make a quick stop in Cienfuegos, because Jeroen wants to quickly check out this city (and do his fast-paced photograph round like a Japanese). We buy the taxi driver an ice-cream and make our way to Trinidad. Marleen booked us a true mansion with a jacuzzi in the bedroom, big pool and plenty of space. We decide to test the pool. In the meantime the neighbors are either slaughtering a pig or somebody is terribly singing, but I think it’s the first one. Everybody here has ducks, a pig and some chicken and they kill them if they need food. Biological food in its purest form. At night we eat in a fancy touristy restaurant where the waiters dance with the waitresses on rumba music.
We decide to have a nightcap in the form of some mojitos on the main square. We meet two Scottish girls, Camilla and Lucy, with which we will spend a lot of time the next days.
We cannot find a taxi back home so the three of us cramp into the two-seater of a bicycle taxi.
In the morning we have to get our asses into Trinidad again because The Netherlands is playing Ecuador. We just pick a café and are the only ones there, they have a big screen and broadcast the World Cup. In the end more and more Dutchies join our café and to top it off 10 middle-aged Dutch guys that travel around Cuba in a Sailing boat join too. We get treated to a lot of beer. We draw 1-1 but the atmosphere is good nevertheless. We’re drunk before lunch. Perfect. We set off towards the beach, where we have pizza and some Coco Loco’s to get our alcohol buzz going. We meet up with Camilla and Lucy. The beach is phenomenal, I feel like I’m repeating myself but: clear blue waters, white sand, palm trees. These are the beaches that are depicted in any travel brochure. We see the sun sink into the ocean.










Today we want to go hiking and see some of the beautiful nature that surrounds Trinidad. I am really proud of myself by arranging a really good price for the taxi that should bring us to the entrance of the park. I say should because he doesn’t bring us there. To our surprise he stops the car after three kilometers and tells us that this is the entrance of the park. Bullshit. We argue and do not reach concensus. I pay him a little bit of the money that I promised him and tell him he is a bad person by leaving us here in the middle of nowhere. I hope he stubs his toe today. I really start to dislike Cuban people. Anyway, the taxi is gone, we are 5 kilometers away from the entrance and we’ve set our minds to hiking today. So let’s hike. When we make it to the waterfall it’s all worth it. We jump off the cliff, swim toward the waterfall and even into a cave where bats are waiting for the night to come. We walk back via a different route through beautiful farmlands and small villages.
Ever since we set foot in Trinidad people have been telling us about this “disco cave”.
I’ve been picturing it as a tourist trap full of pick pockets, prostitutes, downcast locals and tourists that have fallen for it. Even so, we decide to check it out. “We” being the Wijdevennen and its temporal extension consisting of two Scottish girls. The cave is way bigger and cooler than I’ve imagined. There’s a DJ booth nestled somewhere between two stalagmites and you have to watch carefully not to bump your head into other stalagtites. There are no prostitutes (as far as my experienced eye can see), far more locals than tourists and I still have my wallet. Soon the establishment is renamed into the rave cave and after a few mojitos the party is on. Sooner than expected suddenly all the lights go on. I’m drunk as can be so I assume it’s just gotten that late already. I only heard later that the army ordered the staff to close the place earlier because tomorrow is an election day and they apparently want people to fill in the right box soberly. Again we hijack a bicycle taxi to bring us home to sleep off our daze.
Well, we don’t have that much time actually because a taxi will be picking us up 8am.





I’m in the front so I am okay, but in the back Jeroen and Marleen are slowly collapsing to their unfortunate cocktail of a hangover and the heat that is slowly building up in the back of the car. It’s the worst day for a taxi not being able to roll down its windows. When we arrive in Santa Clara I see two very pale faces crawling out of the taxi gasping for fresh air. Jeroen feels better soon, but Marleen is suffering for the rest of the day. Of course we make fun of her, that’s what we’re brothers for. We leave her die a little bit in peace and set off to check out Che Guevara’s mausoleum and some other Guevara relics.
Me and Jeroen inform at a local bus company if we can go to Varadero the next day. He directs us to the bus company for tourists where the price is twenty fold. Another clear example of the strict separation between locals and tourists here in Cuba. The bus is an hour late and brings us to Varadero, basically a long stretch of pumped up all-in hotels along brightly colored turquoise sea water.
My bro and sis also want to relax a bit before going back to their busy lifes back home. That means that after cooking my own meals on a little gas stove in front of my tent fighting off the mosquitos not so long ago, I now find myself being served with food and drinks all day lying on a beach chair. The only thing I have to fight off here are other people of the resort that are aiming for the same last piece of brownie at the dessert-buffet.
In the beginning I don’t like this idea of being pampered all day. Jeroen starts making a collage of typical all-in things he sees me doing: me getting my hotel bracelet, me standing in line for the breakfast buffet, me taking place at the evening entertainment show. He finds it hilarious.
To be honest I start liking this all-in life. First of all the hotel is perfect. Breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets with everything anyone could wish for. Always world cup football at the television in the lounge area. A gym (never seen anybody inside). Its location right on the perfect beach, of course with beach beds and umbrellas and a cocktail bar that’s open any time of the day. Wifi all day (which is a luxury here in Cuba). A perfect pool to cool down after a hard day lying at the beach. But the most I like about all this is the fact that you can just leave your wallet in your hotel room for the length of your stay. No haggling, no thinking about how much something might cost, no searching for food and water, no waiting. I just hope that, once back on the bike, the inverse culture shock will not be too big.
We mostly spend our days on the beach and next to the pool reading and scrolling on our phones, waiting for the next buffet to open. I watch a lot of World Cup football. In the evenings the hotel organises an evening programme. It sounds very cringy and I can assure you that indeed it is. Still we go check it out most of the nights, with the absolute highlight a true magic show complete with a pretty lady (not) being sawn in two.















Than suddenly it is over. Jeroen and Marleen take a bus to Havana and I don’t really know how to spend the rest of my time in Cuba. I miss my bike, but I’ve booked an extra week in Cuba. I decide to take the same bus and to get off halfway in Matanzas, postponing our goodbye one hour. But then it’s time. Big hugs and lumps in throats. And then I’m standing all alone in the streets again. I don’t show it from the outside but the goodbye falls heavy on me. It was great to see my siblings again, it was short but intense and I already miss them. Traveling alone for a long time is no problem for me, but being surrounded by family for two small weeks and having a great time together I feel it is hard to shift back in the right gear afterwards.
I walk towards the city centre and try to find a casa particular. I am alone again so the standards for a room may drop like lead again. It takes a while before I find a, in my eyes, reasonably priced casa. The price is 11 euros per night and for that price I get absolutely nothing: I have to flush the toilet with water from a bucket and from that same bucket I have to take a shower in fetal position. The proprietor is a nice lady and when going over the rules, she tells me dead serious that it is only allowed to bring home one girl.
The Netherlands plays at 10:00 today and I find a café that is willing to put the television on the right channel. The Netherlands wins and continues to the quarterfinals. For the rest of today I have no clue what I should do in this city, even more I don’t feel like doing anything. I miss my bike. I miss the simple goal of cycling south and doing so with every pedal stroke, getting closer to Argentina every day. I am restless. I’ve seen enough of Cuba. I desire going back to my bike and moving on to new places and new adventures. I wish I didn’t have booked these extra days. In the end I decide that it’s a good thing that I miss my bike, because I still have lots of kilometres ahead of me.
In the evening I suddenly find live music being performed on the streets everywhere. Impulsively people are asking other strangers for a dance, people that don’t know each other are suddenly dancing Rumba or Salsa with one another in the streets of Cuba. In the meantime old-timers are stopping on the side of the road to drop of their teenagers that are heading for a night out. I walk past an old colonial building where seniors are gently shuffling in pairs to those same tunes. I only needed half an hour to see that music and dance are deeply rooted in Cuban culture.





I’m back in Havana and I’m sitting on the first step of a porch. The street life here is a slow movie that, in contrast to slow movies, never gets boring. I hear hammering and drilling from a construction site. There is a rooster walking in the street. Money is handed to little boys who then proudly go for a walk because they’ve been given an important task. The laundry above me flutters in the wind. All the girls are sexy here, but don’t dare lay a finger on or even talk to them, because they will break your pinky. At least that’s how they look at you. Greetings are shouted from one window to the window on the other side of the small street. Bicycle taxis take old people carrying grocery bags back home. Everyone is sitting or standing and just waiting a bit, nobody knows for what and I doubt they know for what. Probably for better times. Give the buildings here another 50 years and there will probably be nothing left of them. Crumbled to pieces. A man is swiftly walking down the street with an empty wheelbarrow and a thick Cuban cigar in his mouth.
You gotta love Havana.
You really have to watch your feet while walking here, otherwise chances are high that you end up with a sprained ankle. Rubble, rubbish and tree roots that have decided that the sidewalk looks better vertical. Oh yes and dog shit from all the stray dogs. Still all Cubans are wearing stark white pants, dresses and shoes. How do they keep that clean?
Everything takes ages here. Efficiency is a dirty word invented by capitalist powers from the west. I will give you some examples. The laundry is being counted per piece of cloth, not weighed and measured by kilograms.
That would be too fast. For typing this blog I normally go to a library or an internet café, easy peasy. Not in Cuba. I first had to get an internet card in the special communication store. For purchasing that internet card they had to write all my passport info down. With the internet card I could login to the only computer I could find in Havana (trust me I’ve mapped out all computers in Havana and got stuck at “1”). And because Cubans apparently like inefficiency they are the absolute world champions “standing in line”. They totally don’t mind standing in line for an hour for a sandwich or dropping off their laundry at the Laundromat. Now I notice that it looks like I’m making fun of Cuba, but instead I am just being really grateful to live in such a privileged part of the world.
Doing a number two is also difficult here since there either is no toilet paper on this island or it’s just too expensive. When asking for toilet paper in the hostel I’m staying at I get told that there is none. The solution is to act cool while sneaking into the lobby of a fancy hotel on the main strip to do my business on the toilet in the back of the first floor.
What’s also fun in Havana is to find out which shop has something to sell. It’s quite easy to tell what’s for sale because at some point you will see for example everybody walking past you with a cone of ice cream in their hand. Now you know what’s for sale it’s important to follow the trace. So keep an eye out for ice cream cones and walk in their direction until you’ve found the source. Be quick, because normally there is only one or two buckets of ice cream until the “No Hay Helado” sign goes up again.





I decide to go to the airport the cheap way: by bus. But the bus is an hour late and so I stand there sweating drops of fear. I arrive one hour and 15 minutes before my plane departs. I am already thinking about how much it will cost me to book another plane. But to my utter surprise, the only place in Cuba that is fast and efficient and without queues is …. the airport!
I fly through the check-in desk, security and customs and make it well in time for boarding.
Cuba was astounding in every way. A beautiful island with a crazy history and economy that reflects on modern day society. Catching up with Jeroen and Marleen was really valuable. I’ll never forget Cuba.
Wat een waardevolle vakantie en weerzien met je broer en zus , tijdens je fietsreis, op het schitterend maar arme eiland Cuba
Prachtige foto’s weer en het besef dat je met je fiets veel beter uit de ‘voeten’ kunt
Weer een prachtig hoofdstuk toegevoegd aan je ongelooflijk mooie en spannende avontuur op de fiets
Veel plezier weer met en op je fiets en tot gauw !! Xxx
Weer prachtig om te lezen en geweldig om Marleen en Jeroen weer gezien te hebben. Zal weer wennen zijn zonder broer en zus. Heel veel fietsplezier weer en kijk weer uit naar je volgende verhaal.
Weer genoten van je verhaal. De beste wensen voor 2023 en op naar je volgende belevenissen. Succes weer.
Weer een plaatje dit verslag! Mooi Marinus!