Monday, April 02, 2018

The day I picked up a Cuban hitchhiker...

The hitchhikers were the first thing we noticed when we left Havana, bound for Viñales. Dozens of people were waiting on the side of the highway: men on their way home from work; schoolchildren in pristine white-and-red uniforms; families with toddlers in tow. The early-afternoon sun shone bright, slicing through the mosquito-thick humidity. Yet the hitchhikers stood and waited, seeking respite from the heat under bridges or in the shade of a lone tree between the tobacco and sugarcane fields.

Every now and then a vehicle would stop and pick up some people. There seemed to be a system in place; there was never a fight over who would get a lift first. We saw a group of eight climb into a banged-up orange Plymouth Belvedere, and crowds of 50 or more packed into the back of a truck, hanging on for dear life as the driver swerved to avoid one of the numerous potholes.

‘Don’t pick up hitchhikers’ was the mantra repeated time and time again whenever my husband Nick and I told people we planned to hire a car in Havana and drive west to Viñales and onto Maria la Gorda, a windswept beach on Cuba’s westernmost point. The man at the car-hire shop had even told us that it was forbidden for foreigners to pick up hitchhikers. Full story...

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