Hitchhiking around Cuba

why we travel — By Bob Riel on August 25, 2006 at 11:11 am

There’s a fun story in the Christian Science Monitor about one person’s experiences hitchhiking in Cuba. Because of the scarcity of automobiles and the overcrowded nature of public transportation, Danna Harman explains, hitchhiking is a way of life on the island, with a culture all its own.

Outside Trinidad, it became clear that life on the road involved a lot of waiting by the side of it. An hour after arriving, I was still standing there with the off-duty policeman and co. By then, we had been joined by a family going to the beach, a dozen people heading to work, an elderly man on crutches, a young couple on a date, and a church group. And, of course, an “amarillo.”

As might be expected, hitchhiking in a land of rules is no free-wheeling affair. State officials, known as amarillos for their yellow uniforms, are stationed along the country’s highways to oversee the process. Their job – for which they earn a respectable 400 pesos ($15) a month – is to make lists of riders and flag down passing cars.

Not all cars are required to stop. Those with yellow, caramel, and white plates indicate state vehicles and must pull over. Brown plates (military) and blue (private) should stop but don’t have to. Little is expected of green (tourists) or black (diplomats) plates because, as Araceli explained, “they think differently about their responsibilities to the community.”

Although the going was slow at first, the writer’s road experiences picked up by the third day:

I was getting discouraged with hitchhiking, when, on Day 3, it all came together. As I stood outside Remedios, an amarillo finally stopped a state vehicle, a minivan filled with workers returning from a “fun day” at the beach. I jumped in. We then pulled over for the driver to buy some avocados. We stopped later for onions for the driver’s assistant. We picked up a family going to see cousins. No one talked to me, but it felt great. I was hitchhiking.

I got dropped off in Santa Clara, where … I got another ride. And another – all the way back to Havana. My fortunes had turned. There was Pablo with his horse and buggy, who wedged my laptop bag between his legs and the horse’s backside for “safekeeping.” Caesar and Diego from the national water department, who told me about their time as soldiers in Angola. And Luis Alfonso, a cancer specialist, who took me for tea at his great aunt’s home. By the time I rolled into Havana the next evening, chatting baseball with my new friend Jamie from the Finance Ministry, I was a bona fide hitchhiker – living the Cuban experience.