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Outside Magazine July 2001

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Free Cuba Now (cont.)

TREY AND I PADDLED ON. The climbing sun was heating the morning, and I took off my shirt. Still no breeze. The early commotion of feeding fish had quieted, and nothing moved on the slick of the water but our curling bow wakes. The little green islands squatted on the sea in the blurred aureoles of their own reflections. No one was out here, no fishermen, no cruisers. Any other islands like these in the Caribbean would be crawling with yachts. How long they'll remain this way is anybody's guess. Back at Cayo las Brujas we were staying in a string of 24 new luxury cabins, and there were no other buildings we could see on any of the islands. But an airstrip has been carved out of Brujas's mangrove big enough to handle 747s, and a tourism director for Villa Clara province told me that the government has plans to build 20,000 "ecologically responsible" units in this part of the archipelago. So far the runway lay fallow, and the rooms were only on paper.

We paddled hard, not talking, hearing only the water on the hulls and the steady plash of the paddles. With each stroke, drops sprayed from the lifted blades and I could taste salt. We passed close to a key, under the leaves of the mangroves, and along the tangle of exposed prop roots. Beneath us, long strands of seaweed trailed after the tide like grass bent to a wind. I wanted badly to keep going, to make the crossing to the next group of islands and keep heading west. I could almost imagine that we'd already been out for days, that we'd just left a midden of fire-scorched crab shells on a beach behind us.

We finally turned the corner of the farthest island in the string and headed for open water. There, ahead of us, snugged to its anchor chains like a lifeless key, floated a 400-foot, white-hulled cargo ship. I'd heard about it. The San Pasqual had been here, abandoned by its owners, for nearly 70 years, one of the first concrete-bottomed ships. It was a dog: In the late twenties it had taken six months to sail from San Diego to Cuba, and the owners were so disgusted they left it to the mercy of the tides. We paddled close, down along the curving white cliff of its hull. There were rusty steps down to the water, and we tied to them and climbed aboard. To our great surprise, a young man greeted us on deck and led us down to the saloon. We stepped through the door and in the dimness made out tables, a bar, a glass case. The case was filled with antique travel games, backgammon and checkers. Packs of Winston cigarettes sat in a rack behind the bar. I walked through another doorway to the dining room. Ten tables were set for a formal dinner. On the wine cart, bottles of merlot and pinot grigio lay propped across the stems of artfully overturned wineglasses. In the belly of each glass was a flower petal. I came back to the bar, where Trey had ordered us double espressos.

"Who comes here?" I asked the man. He shrugged. "Nadie. Nobody comes here now. Would you like to see the cabins?"

Trey and I stepped out onto a steel gangway and sipped our coffee. I thought how Cuba slips always from the grasp. Lovelier than the rainbowed dorado, more elusive than the doves. The man was waiting for something—something to happen, something to change. His ship, like his country, floated in a warm sea, neglected and left for nearly dead. He said the government planned to make the boat a scuba center one day.

To the north, billows of cumulus were beginning to pile over the Gulf. In a few hours it might storm. Trey and I thanked the steward and got back into our boats and paddled away. Before we rounded the island I looked back and saw the white ship on the blue water, and the young man watching us from the rail.

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