Night-Time Russian Roulette
What a sodding long, weird, soaked to the skin day.
We’d left Vinlaes at a reasonably early hour this morning and for an hour cruised the twisty mountain roads before joining the main National highway. We’d wrestled over which roads to take in order to take us south west, but in the end conceded that with only a week left on Cuba, we needed to use the main road to get in some distance before the day was over.
An hour west of Havana and the skies opened and we were socked in seconds. We’d been riding all morning with one eye cast skyward, hoping to avoid a drowning. I guess which ever rain gods we’d been praying too weren’t listening. As quickly as we got socked the roads became like an ice-rink. With a layer of diesel fuel on the road, now mixed with rain water I slid my boot onto the asphalt to gauge the slickness. I could barely any resistance at all between my boot and the road. “Be careful, it’s super slippery” I’d yelled to Lisa over the SENA comm’s.
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And, so our day began. It went on like this all day. We literally slid and slipped past Havana, paying careful attention to be very gently with the throttle and the brakes.
The rain would stop and we’d dry out only to be socked again in minutes. The fast past we’d found this morning and had hoped to keep and been slowed to a careful snails crawl.
As the day closed out, we’d ridden into 4 small villages and asked about the possibility of finding a casa particular. The response had been “No Casa aqui” (not here).
Cold and tired in during the most powerfully torrential downpour of the day, we’d pulled over into a small truck stop and ducked under the low tin roof of the closed café. Our MX boots felt like swimming pools as our feet sloshed around inside them.
The small gift stall was closing up and in a last ditch effort and using the last ounce of my optimism I’d asked the young man if he knew of a Casa Particular near by? In perfect English he explained that there was nothing close but his boss, owns a home with a room in the town of Jaguey Grande. With a phone called me, he’d confirmed the room was available, now all we had to do was get there.
We finally arrived at spent the night at this wonderful small casa particualar. If your heading through Cuba this is a great stop-over. Boym did we get lucky.
GPS: N22 31.163 W81 08.057
Me scribbling these notes means nothing. Here’s we’ve video’s the last part of our day. This will give you a better of idea of how our day closed out. Enjoy.
As always comments are encouraged and welcomed ☺
