Zulueta-Placetas: On our Way to Guaracabulla, the Geographic Center of Cuba
The morning rushed up on us during sleep about the same time it always does. Too damn early.
“The muchachos are not here yet?” the promatora asks, referring to Maykel and Carlos Alejandro. My two friends had agreed to meet us in Zulueta and guide us into Guaracabulla, the geographic center of Cuba and Carlos Alejandro’s hometown. We stand on the road heading out of the Casa de Protocolo. She just rolled up in her Lada to say goodbye and to give Joel, Alexis and the kids a ride back to Remedios.
“They are on their way, pidiendo botella, hitchhiking, from town,” I say.
“Ah,” she says. “That must have been them that we passed. The one with a hat and the other one with the baseball cap.”
“Yeah. Maykel always wears a straw fedora hat,” I nod.
She gives the driver instructions to go pick them up.
I say goodbye to Alexis and the crew. I give them all something to remember me: the twins smile wide when I handed them each a pair of biking gloves that I had packed in case I needed help gripping my hiking poles. Alexis and Joel object to receiving 50 CUC each but then shift to thanking me when it becomes obvious that I am not going to take it back.
"We’re leaving you in good hands, it seems,” says Alexis.
“Se te quiere, Alexis.” I say. Gracias por todo.” They head back to a life of little resources and much work. This walk had been a vacation for them.
The poor promotora, anxiety perpetually etched on her face like the fine carvings found on a ceremonial mask, has gone through hell these last few days, having to keep track of my wanderings and adjusting the points of arrival set months in advance. These maneuvers were performed with unreliable and often nonexistent transportation. Nothing that I say or do can show the gratitude that I feel, I tell her. Her slight frame and gaunt face give her the look of a poster child for eternal exhaustion. This is the lot of Cubans. To work non-stop for casi nada excepto orgullo, almost nothing except pride.
***
Carlos Alejandro has been busy since I last saw him in El Purio scouting the way to Guaracabulla on Google Earth (a most torturous process, I imagine, given the speed of the internet in Cuba). We head out of Taon by following the road from the Casa de Protocolo, crossed the main north/south road connecting Remedios to the interior.
“We’re looking for way to get from Zulueta to San Andres,” explains Mykael as I wield my tiny green lantern as a light saber looking for signs.
“Then to Fidence, El Copey and on to Guaracabulla,” says Carlos Alejandro, “that’s the trail for today.”
We ask our way out of town heading for San Andres, a hamlet with a ruined fort guarding the old railroad line, southwest of Zulueta, por dentro. Before long, we are in a canyon of cane fields. The sun rises at our backs so we knew we would have to cut south at some point but the solid wall of grass (sugar cane is a grass) presented a consistent obstacle. Sugar cane, tall, ready to cut, brightens beautifully as the sun rises but it is as impenetrable as a razor blade curtain. A guardaraya cuts off to the left leading deeper into the maze of cane. It is wide; well-traveled.
“Is this it?” I ask. “Is this where we cut to San Andres?”
“Not sure,” says Carlos Alejandro. “Too soon, I think. Let’s keep going.”
We kept going west on the dirt road. Nothing but cane and an occasional palm tree in the distance. I feel in my gut that we should have taken that turn. We are lost in a wonderful way, roaming the beautiful Cuban countryside, but lost nevertheless. I comment to my guides that if we were going to be lost, we might as well be lost heading in the right direction.
“We should go back to that turn off. Head south. We’ll hit a road eventually.”
“Ok. But let’s wait a few minutes. This road is turning south up ahead, see.”
“Ok.” I say. “As long as it turns south, we’re ok.” It turned south sharply.
A railroad track, there is always a railroad track.
“We’re too far west,” says Maykel. “We passed San Andres. It is on these tracks but back east a bit. You’re right,” he says to me, “We should have turned at the guardaraya that we passed.”
We walk the rails back, into the sun. The sharp wind-blown blades of the cane cut the yellow-white light like sparks flying off flint. The tips look like sparklers in the sunrise. The vicious marabú (a relentless, kudzu-like predator plant with sharp spines) seems soft and puffy between the tracks and the cane. It is a glorious morning and the extra kilometers brought on by missing the turn just allows me to savor it more.
On our left we pass a small white tiled monument to the memory of Rodolfo Leon Perlacia, a young revolutionary born in San Andres, tortured and killed by Batista’s troops in 1958 as he led a group of young idealists to join Che Gueravara in the Escambray mountains. Revolutionary history is recorded in the geography of Cuba.
Soon after the monument, a dirt road crosses the rails, north south. To the north the dirt road disappears into the cane.
“This is the guardarraya we decided not to follow before,” I say.
“And there,” points Maykel further up the track past a thicket of short palm trees lining the south side of the tracks, “is the fuerte de San Andres. Small, fortified outposts built in the 19th Century guarded the railroad crossing throughout Cuba. Some remain, like that one. The folks that lived and worked in the old ingenious of Caturla and Bauza around here called that one El Castillo.”
We followed the dirt road into the town of Fidencia, leaving El Castillo down the track. Fidencia is the last of the 19th century sugar mills that we will pass on this part of the Camino.
“This is the last of the sugar economy in Villa Clara,” says Maykel.
We reach the small crossroad hamlet of Carbo Servia, another mill town (batey) on life support after the closing of the ingenio. An old woman has taken advantage of the location and set up shop on her front porch selling cold drinks and coffee right off the central plaza where all roads meet. We approach her, all smiles.
“Something real cold for all of us,” I say.
“We have lemonade?” she says.
“Perfecto.”
She fills three plastic cups from the cooler on the table that is her counter. We savor the cold
.
“How do we get to El Copey?” asks Maykel. She motions down the asphalt road towards Placetas.
“Por dentro,” I say.
Her head shakes and she insist that there is no “por dentro.” That the asphalt road is the only way until the bottom of the hill, were we turn right beyond a farm with a small knoll behind it. Then straight, she says down a dirt road. The detail of the knoll impresses us enough to trust her. At first, she refuses the tip I offer but relents. As in most Cuban businesses not in the major urban areas, I pay in Cuban national currency (the CUP). Drinks for all of us plus a generous tip runs me less than one dollar.
About forty-five minutes later, when we pass her stand again after realizing that she in fact did not know what she was talking about, I resist the urge to take back that tip. We never found the farm with a knoll. Maybe it exists further down the road but Maykel asked a couple of güajiros on horseback when we reached the bottom of the hill about the house and the back roads to El Copey.
“Go back to Carbo Servia. Go through town. Stay on the road until you see the sign that announces the town, Carbo Servia. There is a road on the left there. Take it. Follow that all the way. Ask when you need to.”
Now, those were clear directions glowing with confidence. That they were on horseback also increased their credibility. For the second time on the same day we had taken the wrong road. Unlike Esteban, we had a schedule to keep. We hoofed it up back up the hill to Carbo Servia.
If the lady realizes that she misguided us, “que nos embarco,” as I say a bit too loudly going by, she doesn’t show it. She smiles and waves as we walked past. Neither Maykel nor Carlos Alejandro look up from staring at the road.
We make it to the town of Jagueyes and verified our route again.
“Almost there,” a guajiro on a bicycle assures us.
Minutes later we spot the Placetas cultura staff waiting for us at the crossroad hamlet of El Copey, about two kilometers west of Placetas; a half dozen folks looking our way. One waves, making sure that we do not mistake them for a group random stranger milling about the crossroads, looking for rides, selling garlic bundles.
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