The state owned the vast majority of cars, trucks and motorbikes, and these were assigned to people on the basis of their needs – or so it was claimed. Tom explained that in communist Cuba, very few people were granted permission to own a vehicle. “Otherwise, I would have had to wait for one of those. “Thank goodness you guys picked me up today,” Tom said. The truck stopped and a couple jumped off. Why on Earth would he be speaking Polish and Czech, if not to swindle tourists?Īs he was telling us that he worked in a tobacco plantation, we overtook a truck loaded with hitchhikers, packed in the back like sardines. ‘ Yes, because he’s a hustler,’ I kept thinking.
We learned that Tom spoke it fluently, as well as Polish and Czech. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of his eyes in the rear-view mirror – and he would immediately look away.īy then, we had switched to English. Tom timidly started a conversation while Ernesto sat in silence behind me, his eyes burning through my back. And I would agree, just like I had agreed to give them a lift. They would try to sweet talk us into parting with the remainder of our pesos convertibles, the currency used by tourists in Cuba that’s worth 25 times more than the peso Cubano, mainly used by locals. Or, quite simply, they would break our hearts with a story of how their little brother is sick/their little niece can’t go to school/their uncle needs medicine. Or Ernesto would pull out a machete and cut off our heads. Tom would lead us somewhere remote, then he and Ernesto would rob us blind – including taking the Peugeot 206. We hesitated, searching for a comeback that would allow us to get directions, yet politely refuse to give the young man a lift. Nick and I exchanged uneasy glances, the same questions racing through our minds. I can take you there if you like?”Ī hitchhiker. How do we get there?” I replied in Spanish. “Yes, all good, thanks! We are going to Viñales. It was a man in his mid-20s, with close-cropped curls and a striped T-shirt. We had to make a decision.Īs we pondered left or right, somebody tapped on the windscreen. The shadows of the palms were lengthening across the street, and the golden sun shone low through the windscreen. It was 2006 and we didn't have a smartphone. There were no signs, and the map didn’t help. We left the motorway and followed a secondary road until we got to a T-junction, with no idea whether to turn left or right. Sugarcane fields gave way to patches of palms and forest, and the terrain became progressively more hilly, a sign that – maybe? – we were nearing the landmark mogotes, or limestone hills, of Viñales. We kept driving, following a tattered map that didn’t fold properly, which the car-hire place had given us.
The man at the car-hire shop had even told us that it was forbidden for foreigners to pick up hitchhikers. ‘Don’t pick up hitchhikers’ was the mantra repeated time and time again whenever my husband Nick and I told people we planned to hire a car in Havana and drive west to Viñales and onto Maria la Gorda, a windswept beach on Cuba’s westernmost point.
#PORNHUB GAY BBC TEENS DRIVER#
We saw a group of eight climb into a banged-up orange Plymouth Belvedere, and crowds of 50 or more packed into the back of a truck, hanging on for dear life as the driver swerved to avoid one of the numerous potholes. There seemed to be a system in place there was never a fight over who would get a lift first. Yet the hitchhikers stood and waited, seeking respite from the heat under bridges or in the shade of a lone tree between the tobacco and sugarcane fields.Įvery now and then a vehicle would stop and pick up some people.
The early-afternoon sun shone bright, slicing through the mosquito-thick humidity. Dozens of people were waiting on the side of the highway: men on their way home from work schoolchildren in pristine white-and-red uniforms families with toddlers in tow. The hitchhikers were the first thing we noticed when we left Havana, bound for Viñales.