“Water? Yup, this was the last drop!” BACKDROP: high elevation plantations and mountains and heat.

97km ÷ 12 Hours = 8.1km/h

Waking up on a warm morning with a destination in mind and marked on your map, there are certain things you may feel assured of; your bicycle is working well (at the moment), you have food, the weather is hinting it may get warm, you basically know where you’re going and your best friend is there to share the adventure with you.

Some things you may feel less confident about could be the quality of the riding surfaces, the number of vehicles on the road, how sticky and dead-hot it will get, how much elevation gain your day may contain or just how hard it’s going to be riding 97 kilometres.

Lian and Alex had a day not completely unlike this. Yet Alex writes about it so much eloquently and Lian’s photos bring to life the imagery in our minds…..

“Enroute to Vinales

The sugar cane fields, in varying states of perennial ripeness, share borders with the mountains to the northwest, and the morning passes in earnest with rolling sunflower fields, cut cane, and pueblas inset from the main highway. During the high sun hours of the day, the farmers gather in shadowed stands for refrescos and diesel, and in one of these hollers happened to be our god send in the form of a faded gas station with cases of water. Having been short on water for days, and with the mercury rising by the moment, this secured our climb into the mountains in a way our contingency, hydrating on soda, near noon we reached the foothills and under the high sun began our ascent, an unrelenting and unkempt jump from sea level to the sub peaks of the western extent of the Sierra de las Organos. Buffered by our water supply, we escaped the first ridgelines, passing oxen and white crane into the high valleys separating the various peaks.”

Local knowledge, friendship, encouragement and importantly, cervezas en route!

The Elan Vital and Remo both decked out with traditional touring set-ups. Additionally, Lian is using the Onsight Equipment “Circo” handlebar-duffel bag which comes with a shoulder strap for any off-the-bike carrying duties.

“The sharp multicolored karst limestone landscape reveals glimpses of caves, set high on open khaki and grey cliffs, an abuela poking her head out of a curious window to the street below, dark green fields of growing tobacco, a single man tending a swath with his horse. Words like intoxicating, when mixed with the midday heat, seem appropriate.”

Some shady respite from the high heat in Cuba

“We came upon a art gallery, a simple one story thatch and pole building at the end of our decsent, tended by a warm care taker who fixed us coffee in gourd halves and mango. At her advice and our hunch, we decided to shoot for Vinales, some 40 kilometers West, despite the late hour, feeling reinvigorated as the heat abated and the espresso revitalized our spirits. A winding but flat route seemed logical enough as it followed the La Jagua River. The miles rolled by as school came out of session and the dirt roads filled with starched uniformed children and field workers in the high gumboots caked in red dirt of tobacco fields, the main crop of the valley.”

“Well I guess that’s it! Let’s go home.”

“The more one travels with one map, the more ones begins to know the cartographer as if personally, their penchant for brevity, exaggeration, or 'sand bagging' as rock climbers call it: understating a mountain as but a rill. The dashed line simply listed as 'secondary road' slowly criss crossed on our westward journey. The only indication we were getting closer to our destination and possibly further from the coarse blue line of the ruta mayor to the North, was the slowly increasing silence as truck gave way to car, giving way to horse, and finally, only bicycles and campesinos, homeward from work. At length our map led us to a farmers house, who, nodding understandingly at our predicament, directed us towards our goal, and gave a reassuring aim of confidence which till now had been dead reckoning across the countryside. We closed the setting sun moments into Vinales, where a much needed bed lay 97 kilometers from where we had started nearly twelve hours before.”

BRODIE BICI CUBA 2 - THE JOURNEY