Our campervan passes through Manicaragua, a tobacco-growing (once sugar-growing) town in the centre of Cuba. Manicaragua’s leaves are used for the dense core of Habanos cigars; premium leaves from Pinar del Río form the outer layer.
This is a true backwater but in the 1940s and 1950s, before the bottom dropped out of sugar, it had money: there are cinemas and rundown hospitals. We pass by the pitched tin roofs of tobacco-drying houses, and see workers in high straw campesino hats hoeing the red earth.
One farm is so picturesque I feel an urge to go in. So we do – and have the kind of heartwarming interlude you’d never have on an organised tour. The farmer, Mayorilio Lopez, likes it that we’ve barged in on his day. Born in 1929, he was in the revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos’ column in the Escambray mountains. He keeps a rolled puro – a pure Cuban cigar – in his breast pocket but not to smoke; he likes to chew on it while he thinks. His son lives in … what’s that place all the Cubans go? Miami, I suggest. Yes, there. He forgets things now. When we leave he turns to me and places his hand on his heart.
“Have a beautiful life,” he says. “Fight for your life. Try to come back before I die.”
I’m exploring the island’s countryside in a Fiat Ducato 3000 van with my Cuban friend Alejo, thanks to a new government initiative under which campervans can be rented for the first time (well, since a failed venture in the 1990s). We pick up the van in Havana and over seven days drive 800 miles on a round trip to Trinidad, the 500-year-old honeypot on the south coast, taking in Santa Clara – a destination for worshippers at the mausoleum of Che Guevara – and a few lesser-visited gems.
The camper is an unwieldy beast: it’s a bit like driving around in an Ikea wardrobe but we get used to it. There’s a small kitchenette and fridge, a table that folds out into a double bed and two cavities for up to four extra people. It would be a cosy squeeze for four adults and a child – but it would work brilliantly for a family.
At 20 camping spots around the western and central part of the island – from Viñales in the west to Cayo Coco on the central northern coast (but not further east, yet) – campers can hook up to electricity to run aircon (a battery, won’t last all night) and to eliminate waste. An alternative is to ask nice people along the way (or pay them a little) to use their power and bathroom. In essence, no one is tied to any particular place, and wild camping is allowed, though life is easier using the official sites (we’re given a map).
Having the camper means we get to see less obvious things than we would on a bus tour. Plus, the $180-a-day cost translates to the equivalent of Cuba’s exorbitant car hire and a bog-standard hotel.
One such place is Embalse Hanabanilla, a glimmering reservoir in the northern foothills of the Sierra Escambray, Embalse Hanabanilla, which was created by flooding a valley in the 1960s. It’s not on anyone’s must-see list – unless you’re a hydro-electricity geek or a freshwater fishing fan with a penchant for largemouth bass (it has the world’s largest population), but it’s pretty, with slopes carpeted with thick forest and royal palms along the water’s edge.
Near the Hanabanilla hotel – a hulk of pure, Soviet-style ugliness, with a pool that juts into the lake – we find a boatman to take us out around that lake. We climb up through tropical rainforest to a lookout where we gaze, with the vultures, upon its beauty.
There is no one on the water apart from the ludicrously well-built Cuban canoeing team, who look bionic. The boatman takes us to a clapboard cottage-cum-restaurant on a tiny island, where we eat a rustic meal of smoked pork and salad surrounded by cavorting puppies. It’s Sunday, and when we get back to our camper, we notice a group of locals having a car-washing party. They’ve driven their Ladas into the water and are cleaning them, swimming, and drinking Cristal, the local beer.
We spend the night in Topes de Collantes, the village of the eponymous national park. There’s no charging point, so we stop on the outskirts, chat up some locals, eat some pasta we prepared on the electric hob earlier, and crack open the Havana Club. The air is fresh – you don’t need aircon here.
The next morning, back on the road, we pass modest memorials to soldiers of the civil war: for five years following the 1959 revolution, US-backed counter-revolutionaries launched guerrilla strikes, which resulted in quite a few deaths.
The sierra and Gran Parque Natural Topes de Collantes, where you’ll find the Caburní waterfall, are a popular day trip from Trinidad, though most people head to Parque el Cubano, which borders Trinidad. But having the van means we can go to the Nengoa waterfall in Guanayara park. The camper doesn’t make it up one particular road – it’s not a four-wheel drive – so we walk the last few miles. Our route takes us through woods of mamey, bitter orange, coffee and banana, shaded by avocado and the royal palm, past ferns and flittering butterflies. Weather-beaten limestone cliffs rise up to a bell-shaped opening of birch trees where the waterfall thunders. We are encircled. We are alone.
Heading towards Trinidad, we stop at a rustic paladar (private restaurant) for an early dinner. El Manantial has a veranda filled with hammocks, ferns and goatskin chairs. We eat tasty tilapia from its pond and then it’s a drive downhill, glimpsing the hazy, late-afternoon blue wash of the horizon and the unspoiled forested slopes of the southern foothills.
Trinidad is one of the most touristy town in Cuba. But justifiably so: nowhere else showcases Cuban history so gorgeously – from the last 500 years to a thriving (in the case of this town, anyway) present. Casa particulares (private rentals that predate Airbnb but are almost all now on its website) abound, as well as paladares, arts and craft stalls, dance schools and everything in between.
I have been to Trinidad many times, so I ask Alian Rojas, a guide I know, to take us somewhere different. We go to a private, magnificent colonial house, turned into a temple to Yemayá, the Afro-Cuban goddess of the sea. There’s a pumpkin in the window (pumpkins are sacred to Yemayá, and to her followers, this is a no-go food) and the Babalaô-orisha, or high priest, is rocking in a chair on the patio, dressed in crisp white linen trousers and guayabera shirt and nursing a cigar. He is surrounded by crowing cocks and fat white doves and is prepping for the initiation into Santería (the dominant Afro-Cuban religion, which hails from the Yoruba culture of Nigeria) of a lady who is lying down in a room next door. But, being Cuban, he finds time to chat, regardless. His premonition-filled dreams and spiritual visions started at the age of 13. His father, an atheist communist, initially thought he was mad. A number of years later, finally convinced of his son’s authenticity, he wrote to the state, requesting to turn the family house into a temple. The powers that be acquiesced.
When the heat of the day softens, we trundle down in the campervan to the long, scrubby finger of land that is Península de Ancón, 10km south of Trinidad, where there’s one of the best beaches on Cuba’s south coast. We lounge happily in the aquamarine waters of Playa Ancón and loll under fat palms until the sun dips behind the horizon. This time, instead of casting around for the last of the maquinas, the rumbling classic cars heading back into Trinidad at the end of the day, we are free to stay till the sky turns inky blue-black, drinking our own cold beer supplies.
Back in Trinidad, we park on a quiet street of red-tiled rooftops and shuttered porticoes, where we’ll sleep later. We can’t enter the town centre: it is pedestrianised, something which lends it an unhurried feel. The giant, uneven cobblestones in this Unesco-protected town mean there’s no rushing, even if you want to. On the narrow streets, the camper feels a lumbering eyesore. But we are thankful: here, we are just another bunch of tourists in the throng, though it’s been sweet to see some offbeat and unexpected things along the way.
• The campervan was provided by Cuba Private Travel, which has rentals for $180 a day, when renting for a week (email via the website for details). Vans are for a minimum of two adults and a maximum of five adults and one child. Diesel, at $1.25 a litre, is not included. One passenger must be over 25
