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Hemingway Adventure
Havana, Cuba (ninth day)
Anxious to sample all the myriad forms of Cuban transport, I ride out to the Marina today in a motorcycle sidecar. They were very popular in Sheffield when I was a lad, but they tend to be consigned to transport museums nowadays.Cuba is a living transport museum, so you still see plenty of them, jostling for road space with Chevy Bel Airs from the 1950s, stretch Skodas from the 1960s, horse-drawn buggies from the 1740s, and lots of bicycles and scooters of indeterminate age, often with parilleras aboard. Parilleras are the girls who sit sideways on the back of bicycles, usually wearing eye-catching fluorescent Lycra shorts. My driver points to them as we speed along the Avenida Zoologico, and expresses a warm enthusiasm.
'Especially the ones with big bottoms!' he yells into the slipstream. A sign of beauty in Cuba, evidently.
Aboard ship and out onto the famous blue water. Except that it isn't so blue today. The wind has turned again and slabs of iron-grey cloud loom over us, blotting out the sun and washing out the colours of yesterday. The competition ends at two o'clock and by then our boat has not even a false alarm to show for its last days' sailing. Very sportingly, they allow me on the fishing chair for the last few hours of daylight. And, of course, everyone hopes that beginner's luck might yet save the day.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Havana, Cuba (ninth day)
- Country/sea: Cuba
- Place: Havana
- Book page no: 226
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