The bus to Jucaro

It was still dark out the next morning when we came out of the Parque Central carrying our bags and the rod cases to get on the bus that goes to Jucaro. Many men were already inside the bus, sleeping, and others were milling around the street making sure everything was properly loaded, the fishing cases resting on top of the luggage in the belly of the bus instead of on the bottom. Nick got on the bus to save a spot for Bobby, and Fletch went back inside the hotel to get a couple of bottles of water to take with us. When I came out the bus was crowded. Thick headed men with stale breath were sprawled across the seats in front, slumped like drunks. The only open seats were far in the back, near the restroom, which smelled heavily of urine. Hardy got on the bus and sat in a seat across from the restroom. “You know what they say,” he said, “if you’ve got diarrhea or want to meet people who do, sit next to the restroom on a bus.”

It was not yet four in the morning yet I could see inside the hotel that already a few people were having breakfast. The sight of them buttering their toast and pouring coffee from a white porcelain pot made me hungry. Fletch and his son, Nick, had eaten breakfast in the older part of the hotel before four and when Nick got on the bus he offered me a hard roll and two dry cookies he’d stuffed in his shirt pocket. I took them. The bus driver climbed on and with a hiss the door closed and we drove slowly down the block and around to the old entrance of the Parque Central where a handful of men were shivering in the shadows of the arcade, rubbing their arms to stay warm. While their luggage was loaded and they jockeyed for seats, sometimes waking up one of the thick-chested men taking up two places in the front of the bus, Hardy and Nick went back into the hotel to grab cold ham and cheese sandwiches from the table that had been set up in the lobby for early breakfast. Nick handed me two of the hard roll sandwiches and a bottle of water and I ate slowly as the bus lumbered through the empty streets of the still-slumbering city.

There was much wheezing and coughing and snoring in the dark bus. Hardy had fallen asleep before we’d even gotten out of Havana and Bobby and Nick were slumped against each other, their mouths open, their heads thrown back as if they’d had their throats slit. I couldn’t sleep. I could never sleep on a bus. I got my iPod and put on my headphones and listened to the three Tibetan bells signaling the beginning of a mindful meditation session and closed my eyes paying attention to the breathing from my belly. If I could not sleep at least I could meditate, which for me was almost as good.

Shortly after the sun came up the bus stopped at a little roadside restaurant where you could order a coffee and use the restroom. The thick men in the front of the bus, who looked like Russians to me, turned out to be Finns, which is pretty much the same thing. They bought bottles of rum and liters of the sweet, oily-tasting Cuban coke and when they got back on the bus, they started passing around clear plastic cups and making Cuba Libres though it was not yet eight. The Finns drank quickly, refilling their cups with more rum, sometimes dispensing with the coke, sometimes adding the odd-tasting Cuban orange drink instead. With each downed drink, their thick Slavic speech got louder. They began to stand up in the aisle, as if they were in a bar, laughing, shouting, sticking fingers as thick as sausages into each other’s chests. They also started using the restroom in the back of the bus on a constant basis, one wobbling down the aisle towards the back, their hands reaching out in front of them for chair or shoulder or whatever was available to keep them upright, as another came back. The toilet was used so much that it jammed yet still the Finns continued to squeeze their thick bodies into the small closet. At one point, our guide, Antonio, went into the toilet and saw that the bowl was sloshing yellow urine over the walls and floor and disgustedly got towels to clean it up. The Finn who passed him by on his way back to his seat jovially said, “Well, at least it’s only piss,” and all his compatriots laughed.

The Finns continued to drink. It was amazing how much they could drink so early in the morning. Bottle after bottle of rum came down from the luggage racks above the seats and when that ran out, cans of Cristal appeared from a large cooler in the front. The drive from Havana to the port town of Jucaro, where the boats were waiting for us, took over five hours and the Finns drank right up until the moment we pulled up to the desolate harbor.

The crews for the three boats waiting to take us out to the Jardines were milling about along the harbor along with several military officers, Cuban security officials, and the port authorities. I immediately spotted my old friend, Keko, whose real name is Jesus, and he came up to me, took the luggage out of my hands, and said, “David, my friend, how are you?” I call Keko the Cuban Buddha because he is squat and dark as a hazel nut and very serene. He is also the finest guide in the Jardines. Along with Keko was Jimmy, our other favorite guide, and Idelvis, who we called Elvis, the boat’s engineer and dive master. The crew, including Jorge, a thick-muscled young man with brilliant white teeth and an ear-to-ear smile who I immediately took to be the boat’s spy (there is always one), quickly gathered our duffels and rod cases and dragged them up the gangplank of the Avalon I and within minutes we were pulling out of the harbor, past the derelict fishing boats and crumbling wharf, out into the smooth, cerulean waters south of Cuba towards the archipelago.