El Camino del Cimarron: Getting Ready

   ¡Caminando! 

¿Estas loco? 

 

 The pack is too heavy.  I am willing to bet that Esteban, the run-away slave whose fugitive life I am tracing, did not carry a pack full of unnecessary shit. All this electronic crap brought along in the hopes of documenting this “wild project,” as Miguel Barnet described it.  It all made sense on the planning table. But now, on the first day of the two week walk, climbing up this slight, normally inconsequential hill towards Guayabo Cuartel, the tiny GoPro, the batteries for the two cameras, the charging equipment, all had grown fat and made me wonder what I was thinking when I packed them.  

    Twenty kilometers into the first day the GoPro memory is already filled with views of the endless cane fields and distant sugar mill smokestacks rising like tombstones against the horizon. This is Cuba in 2016, yes, but a great deal of what I will be seeing is Cuba from the 1890s too. This is the terrain where Esteban Montejo ran his flight from slave chains more than one hundred years ago. A beautiful, intense, paradoxical backdrop full of scarcity and plenty. 

Tales of walking the length and width of the most intriguing island in the Caribbean

Walking Cuba

Welcome to the journey! This series of posts will take you on paths that few people have explored. I'll tell you tales of walking the length and width of the most intriguing island in the Caribbean (ok. I'm biased).  

I've walked the back roads and sugar cane trails (guardarayas) of Cuba for over ten years now. In some trips I followed my nose through the small towns dotting the island. In others I tried to establish a walking route along historic paths described in books and myths. 

I first tried to walk Cuba, back in 2011, from east to west, coast to coast. I had the grandiose hope of linking the first seven Spanish settlements of Cuba (Las Siete Villas) into a glorious trekking experience that the true trekking enthusiast would find physically and intellectually interesting.