Roadside Cuba: View from the Bus

This isn’t the Cuba of historic cities, nor the Cuba of sparkling beaches and resorts. It’s a small view of day-to-day Cuba, seen through the windows of a tour bus on the way to somewhere else.

In this case, two somewhere elses; some of these images were made on the road from Cienfuegos to Playa Giron, and others on the road from Santiago to the shrine at El Cobre.

Buildings along the way vary from fresh and prosperous looking to much less so. Many of the freshest may be offering rooms to visitors.

I can’t say that these are typical of Cuba, only that they are typical of what I saw. And, in a way, that was a surprise. The popular press in the U.S. has for many years painted Cuba in only the direst ways. On the other hand, those of us hoping for a different future often had other expectations of Cuba. 

From the bus, though, we can’t see the tremendous changes in people’s lives, the rise in literacy, the availability of health care, the effects of a U.S. economic boycott or even the effects of tourism primarily by Europeans and Canadians. From the bus, Cuba looks bright, inviting, picturesque—and waiting, someday, for me to get off the bus and explore. I hope.

Of course, Cuba is famous for its surviving (if vastly modified) fleet of 1950s American cars, but what’s even more typical of Cuba is the mix of all forms of transporation on the road: cars and trucks, carts and handcarts, pedal power and mopeds and more.

Aside from these smaller vehicles, there’s a wide variety of larger but no less ingenious vehicles, especially in the cities, where trucks turned to buses became common when new buses and even fuel for them ran short under pressure both of the U.S. blockade and the collapse of Cuba’s Soviet partners.

Cuba is an old country, older than the U.S., with many buildings dating back to the 16th through 20th centuries, often side-by-side with more modern additions. But that’s mainly in the cities; on our run through rural areas nothing was all that old.

Along the road and in small villages, simple forms prevailed, but with quite a degree of variation. Looking closely, we could figure out which were simply homes for locals and which were angling for visitors, whether from Cuba’s cities or from among the many Canadians, Britons and Europeans who come each year when the weather grows cold in the north.

Near the beaches, more new construction was evident, as well as large places clearly designed to rent rooms.

Clearly meant for a crowd…

Near the beach…

The only gas station we saw…but there must be more.

Organic and hydroponic farming…

A reminder of politics: Cuba was in the midst of a referendum campaign for a new constitution, with the present president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, campaigning to remind voters that he continues the tradition of past presidents Fidel and Raul Castro: Unity, Continuity, Victory. 

A tour bus in Santiago…