Motorworld

Cuba

The Caribbean: an arc of diamonds in a jewel-encrusted sea. Palm trees. Ice-white beaches. White-hot sun. And the gentle strains of Bob Marley to accompany your multicoloured, multi-cultural early-evening drink. From Trinidad in the south to Cancún in the north, it’s pretty much the same story, only the authors are different. Some of the islands were shaped by the British, some by the Dutch and others by the Spanish and French.

But then there’s Cuba, whose most recent history was penned by Lenin. The colonial gloss is gone, or lost in the smoke from burning civilian planes which the Cuban air force has just shot down. Cuba could be one of the world’s most sought-after holiday destinations. But thanks to Castro, it’s beaten into 184th place by Filey.

Let me explain by reviewing a restaurant in Havana. Called The 1830, it’s an elegant seafront property where a maître d’ from 1955 bows an effusive welcome and clicks his fingers, indicating that a hitherto unseen minion should park your car.

Another click and another bowing minion, starched tea towel draped over his left arm, ushers you into one of the four dining rooms, each of which offers a fine view of the Gulf of Mexico.

The tablecloths are white linen and the glassware is heavily leaded crystal. In 1955, this would have been one of the country’s top eateries where you would have rubbed shoulders with Ernest Hemingway and Frank Sinatra.

Today, it is still one of the city’s finest eateries but that’s like saying the Mahindra Jeep is one of India’s finest cars.

The first indication that all was not well came when we examined the fixtures and fittings more closely. The wood in the door frames was held together with worms and everything looked as though it had last seen a lick of paint in 1958. Which is probably about right. It turned out too that the glass was not leaded. It was heavy because of all the dirt on it.

Then there were the menus which talked of wild and exotic dishes, but none seemed to be available which is why I asked for spaghetti bolognese to start, followed by chicken and fresh vegetables.

Fifteen minutes passed, followed by a further fifteen minutes. Then, we waited a quarter of an hour while fifteen minutes slid by and then, all of a sudden, we noticed another fifteen minutes had gone by. Fifteen minutes afterwards, one of the white uniformed waiters wheeled some food to our table on his trolley.

There was my spaghetti bolognese and there too, surprisingly, were my vegetables, which looked as though they’d been put in the pan back when I’d applied for my visa. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I want these vegetables with my chicken.’ ‘Certainly sir,’ said the waiter. Actually, he spoke no English so it could have been, ‘You miserable capitalist pig. I hope your wallet catches fire, fatty,’ but never mind.

I knew the spaghetti was wrong just by looking at it. There was a crust on the sauce which indicated, correctly, that it was stone cold. Again the smiling waiter arrived who, when he understood what I was on about, plunged his finger into the bolognese and nodded. Yes indeed, sir. It is cold.

Back it went and another fifteen minutes went by as they heated it up. There are no microwaves in Cuba. When it returned, the grated cheese had melted and merged with the pasta, which had been under a grill for a quarter of an hour. But none of this mattered because there, in the sauce, was the dimple mark where the waiter’s finger had been for a wiggle.

I simply shoved it away and sat back to enjoy the sounds of Mrs Mills on the piano. She was terrible and her instrument was worse but I forgot about it when the French windows imploded. The disco outside had begun to pump ‘Thriller’ out at 400,000 decibels but Mrs Mills was unmoved; she soldiered on with her rendition of some fifties’ favourite, proving what I’d begun to suspect. She was as deaf as one of the legs on her piano.

Then I noticed the smiling waiter bearing down once again with his trolley and my plate of vegetables which, after another half hour in the pan, had begun to resemble soup, and my chicken. Or was it?

To try to ensure they got a Michelin star, these people had obviously used one of the tyre company’s products in their cuisine and now I was charged with the task of eating it. It was impossible so, again, I gave up and reached for my drink.

Which had gone. So keen were the staff to act like top-quality hosts and hostesses, they tended to clear your glass the instant you put it down, whether it was empty or not. According to the bill, I’d had eighteen daiquiris, whereas my head the following morning suggested I’d had none.

The bill was £25 each, which explained why we were the only customers that night. Twenty-five pounds is what the average Cuban earns in five months. Cuba is, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked.

Since Russia went all lovey-dovey in 1991, aid to their former friend in the Caribbean has virtually dried up, which means petrol has soared to £2.50 a gallon and there are no takers for Castro’s nickel, or his cigars or even his sugar. Iberia is the only major airline that flies from Europe to Havana, so you need to be a determined and persistent tourist to actually get there.

Then you have to find somewhere to stay. Cubans are banned from even the lobbies of the big hotels so the government feels free to charge what it likes for the rooms. And what it likes tends not to be what you and I like. They cost a bleeding fortune and all the services, being Russian, broke down four years ago and can’t be fixed because there are no spare parts.

Against this sort of background, you would expect to find car-free streets but that simply isn’t the case. They are chock-full of, mostly, American cars from the forties and fifties.

Even though America has had a trade embargo with Cuba for 30 years, ingenuity has kept these dinosaurs going… after a fashion.

I mean, let’s face it: if, all of a sudden, no new cars were imported into Britain, you wouldn’t throw your Cavalier away just because one of the windscreen wipers had come off. And even if there were no Halfords on every street corner you still wouldn’t give up.

You’d jury-rig some kind of device to clear the windscreen when it rains, and that’s what they’ve done in Cuba.

And they’ve gone further too. You couldn’t possibly afford a can of brake fluid out there, even if you could find any, so they’ve worked out that a mixture of alcohol, sugar and shampoo does the job nearly as well.

But what about the engine? Surely, if that goes bang and you can’t get parts, you really have had it? Nope. You simply remove the power unit from a Lada — and they were everywhere when the Russians were in town — and fit that instead.

Most of the old cars out there have Lada engines these days, which is a little sad. We met one chap with an Aston Martin DB4, and he really believed that one day, when Castro is gone, it will fetch $100,000. Well, apart from the complete lack of paint, the total absence of any interior trim and the Lada engine coupled with a Moscovitch gearbox, he might be right.

You see gullwing Mercedes-Benz, Chevvy Impalas, Cadillac Coupe de Villes and countless other rare breeds spluttering around on Lada power. And on every street corner, someone is hooking up a bucket of water to the mains power supply to recharge their 40-year-old battery.

God knows how this works but the sparks and the steam suggest some kind of reaction happens in the bucket. Some kind of reaction happens at the power station, too, which, in rural Cuba, only supplies power for four hours a day.

Obviously, any form of motorsport is right out of the question here, and not only because Che Guevara thought it was decadent. However, at weekends a few intrepid souls take their Lada-powered yank tanks to the old motorway out of Havana and race from bridge to bridge.

This is not high-speed stuff. Indeed, most of them — particularly one car, which started on petrol but switched over to cheaper kerosene when the engine was hot — couldn’t even keep up with our Daihatsu tracking car.

They also have sumo events where two cars go head to head and try to push each other over a line painted in chalk on the road. Exciting it’s not.

Finding Che Guevara’s car, on the other hand, was. For twelve years it had been sitting in a garage, untouched and unloved, so that when we rolled into town no one even knew what sort of Chevrolet it was. And I know more about antique clocks than sixties’ Americana so I can’t enlighten you either, other than to say that it was knackered.

Nothing worked. Because it was a ‘symbol of the revolution’ no one had been allowed to swap the V8 for a Lada unit or replace the fifties’ brake fluid with Wash ’n’ Go.

We employed nine people at 50p a day each and set them to work on getting it going again while we went off to have some fun.

I have become a keen diver in recent years and had cunningly written a piece in the script which required me to appear under the water with a tank strapped to my back, preferably by a reef near a deserted white beach.

A small island off the south coast of Cuba was located, scouted and deemed to be perfect. They even had scuba gear there.

And it came with the personal recommendation of two Dutch guys who were out there buying up seafront properties. ‘Oh yeah,’ they said. ‘It’s a great little island but you’ve got to get there first…’ And with that, they were gone, laughing strangely.

The next morning we found out why. The aeroplane was a small twin-engined thing which, from a distance, looked like a farmyard animal. Closer inspection revealed that the brownness was a result of much rust.

The tyres were flat and the engines were of a type that simply defied belief. If Karl Benz had come up with this version of internal combustion in the 1880s, he’d have given up and become a greengrocer.

Inside, things became worse. Much worse. There were no windows and the seats were only half-fastened to the floor. Seat belts? Forget it.

Miraculously, the engines fired and somehow the plane became airborne, I assume. Without windows it was hard to be sure but after five minutes I figured we would have hit something had we still been on the ground so I knew all was well.

Then it wasn’t well at all because the entire cabin filled with smoke. No kidding, I had to endure a half-hour flight, not even being able to see that there were no windows. All I could see was those two Dutch guys laughing.

But then we were down in what looked like paradise. Unusual birds sang strange songs in vivid trees. The water was aquamarine and the beaches really were as white as driven cocaine.

A gaily coloured bus which looked like it might have been used by Stalin himself took us to the hotel, which sat right on the beach. Perfect. Er… no.

Fashioned from concrete, it had water spurting from every air-conditioning unit but, surprisingly, the pool was empty. Good job too because in the scum which clung to the sides and floor I found life-forms that are in no books. David Attenborough could have made an entire series in it.

Most of the guests were on the beach, where we found the bar, a straw edifice which oozed charm and tranquillity. But the reason why it was so peaceful was simple. It had no drink. No beer. No rum. No Coke. Nothing.

And it was pretty much the same story in the dining room, though at least here there were some forlorn European honeymooners to laugh at as they picked their way through some rock-hard boiled eggs.

You just know what had gone on in the poor bloke’s mind, before deciding to reject the Maldives and Mauritius and Antigua. I’ll take her somewhere exotic, somewhere none of her friends have been. She’ll be impressed. We’ll go to Cuba.

Poor sods.

They couldn’t even dive because we’d commandeered the only boat and the only two sets of scuba kit. And then the real fun and games began.

Keith, the cameraman, has the buoyancy of balsawood and even when he wore a weight-belt that would have sunk a killer whale he was still having trouble getting below the surface, especially as he was burdened with an underwater camera which floated.

I had problems of my own though. My buoyancy vest leaked like a sieve so that it was a jet-propulsion pack. The torrent of escaping air rushed me around the reef like Marine Boy and frightened away all the fish too.

It was a pathetic spectacle. The world’s most revered broadcasting organisation and we had a cameraman who wouldn’t sink, a presenter who was doing Mach 2 and a director who couldn’t dive and was forced to hang around on the surface with a snorkel.

Then our chartered captain had a heart attack. Probably from laughing at us.

It took two days to film our opening sequence for the programme, then it was time for THAT flight back. We were nervous without any real need because we had a different plane, which had windows.

And not much else. It had been built in Russia shortly after the war and last serviced in 1953. You would not believe how much smoke poured out of the engines as we trundled down the runway, dodging dogs, and lumbered into the air.

But as we settled down, I appreciated the view, which really was exquisite. It was a perfect summer’s day, which meant one thing… thunderstorms.

I have been prone to exaggeration in the past but ask anyone on that plane what it was like and they’ll start to quiver. It was truly the most terrifying half hour of my life as the plane bucked, writhed, turned upside down and plummeted.

I was forever being lifted from my seat, a worrying thing because I knew that just inches above my hair was a paddle fan. Would I be decapitated before we hit the deck? It seemed important.

I really did think we were going to die, but somehow I managed a smile because I thought of my daughter, who was one at the time, growing up knowing her daddy had died in a Russian plane, over Cuba, in a thunderstorm. It’s a pretty cool way to go, let’s face it.

We came out of the clouds at tree-top height and cruised at that level all the way to Havana with the lightning turning the wings blue every few seconds. And then we were back.

And in need of a drink, which meant heading for the Cohiba nightclub. It is assumed that researchers on a television programme only have to find the stories, but that’s just part of it. They also have to find the best hotels and the best bars, and in Cuba Andy had excelled himself.

Not only did he have an endless supply of stories that went beyond the realms of ‘amazing’ but also he knew where to take us after a near-death experience at 30 feet.

Outside the Cohiba every night of the week hundreds and hundreds of girls hang around.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Here are some more people waiting for the lift marshals to stop government-registered cars, so that they may get a lift home.’

‘Er no,’ replied Andy. ‘It’s not really like that here.’

Puzzled, I stepped out from our Daihatsu Sportrak and was, within ten seconds, surrounded by a dozen or more pubescent girls who, for the most part, were wearing dental floss.

My word, I thought, these Sportraks have some serious pulling power, but I was a trifle wide of the mark. It seems that they were only interested in my wallet which would enable them to get into the hottest night-spot in town.

In return for the $10 entrance fee, I would have them as my escorts, at my beck and call, all week. Jesus.

Even more amazingly, one chap turned up in a Lamborghini Diablo, which seemed like overkill. You can get your leg over if you have ten bucks, leave alone a £150,000 automobile.

I was even on the receiving end of some smouldering come-ons when I tooled by on a bicycle which was powered by the motor from a fumigation pump. It wasn’t the bike. It wasn’t my good looks or flowing locks. It was my Visa card they wanted; that and a passport out of the place.

Technically, the girls aren’t prostitutes in the accepted sense. In fact, they’ll go further for less, which proves really how screwed-up the Caribbean’s largest land-mass has become.

I found myself wondering, as I strolled round the museum dedicated to the revolution, if Castro and Guevara could possibly have foreseen that one day their people would be asked, by their government, to eat grass.

In fact, the museum is a hopeless waste of money in a country that doesn’t have any. Inside a large glass tomb, there’s the boat that brought the rebels over to Cuba, and outside, there are other mechanised pieces which have been preserved for all time.

There’s Castro’s Land Rover and a Supermarine fighter. Britain, it seems, has a lot to answer for. There’s also a bulldozer which had been converted into a tank, and various vans which had been used to storm the palace and so on.

But, frankly, none of this matters alongside Arnol Rodríguez, who is a living, breathing relic from those revolutionary days.

Along with eight other commandos, on the eve of the 1958 Cuban Grand Prix, he kidnapped Juan Manuel Fangio, who, at the time, was like Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna all rolled into one.

At gunpoint they bundled him out of the Hotel Lincoln, into one of three waiting cars and took him across town to a rather ordinary two-storey house. Inside were a mother and two daughters, revolutionaries to the core, who led him upstairs and gave him steak and salad.

The race went ahead without Fangio, but even the news that some hotheads had poured oil on the track, causing one car to kill six spectators, didn’t take the kidnapping off the front page.

The world’s media was focused on this tiny island which had become known, though only dimly in Europe, as a sort of Monaco for Americans.

It was a dream come true for Arnol and his merry gang, but even better news was just around the corner because when Fangio was released, he told waiting newsmen that he had been treated well and that he sympathised with the cause of the rebels.

Amazingly, the great racer stayed in touch with Arnol until the day he died. The kidnapper and the kidnappee became buddies. Weird, hey?

It was certainly very weird to be sitting in the bedroom where Fangio was held, talking to Arnol and knowing that he’d gone on to be Cuba’s deputy minister for foreign affairs. I found myself wondering how Terry Waite would feel if one of his abductors were to be seen on TV every night meeting world statesmen like Clinton and Chirac and Gerry Adams.

I didn’t exactly worry about it though, because I was beginning to formulate a plan. Whenever I visit a place, I like to bring some permanent reminder home and I was being thwarted at every turn in Havana.

There is almost nothing in the shops, apart from cigars, which I don’t like, and shoddy Che Guevara T-shirts. I bought a photocopy of Che’s resignation letter to Fidel and even procured a bank note from 1960 signed by beardy himself.

But I wanted something bigger… like a car.

The streets really are chock-full of ageing classics which would, with a bit of attention, fetch all sorts of silly prices in the land of MTV.

I’m told that in the current climate, it’s hard as hell to get them out but not impossible, and that was good enough. I mean, I’d just seen an Aston Martin DB4 slide by, and I wanted it.

And that Cadillac over there. And the gullwing Mercedes in that barn. And that Porsche speedster. No kidding, you don’t have to hunt for cars like this. They’re everywhere.

There was even a Maserati which, said its owner, was one of only two ever made. He didn’t know what model it was, and the ravages of time had removed most of the clues, so I wasn’t sure whether he was bluffing or not.

This car was a bare shell. It had no engine, no interior trim, no seats, no lights, nothing. But he wanted $50,000 for it, arguing that it had once been used by Mrs Batista, wife of the former president.

This was the third car I’d see that day which had once been used by Mrs Batista, but it was not to be the last. I was shown four Jaguars that had belonged to Frank Sinatra and countless old wrecks which had been vomited in by the old drunk himself, Ernest Hemingway.

Si Señor, I know it is a worthless piece of junk that is not even fit for the scrapyard but Ginger Rogers once owned it so I am asking for $100,000.

And they’re not going to give up either, because the haggling has only just begun.

Later, when countless Westerners have told them to get lost, they’ll sell for decent money, but not now.

Che Guevara’s car was different, though. Here was something that, we know, was used by someone famous. And here it was, after nine days of solid slog, emerging from the old town barn and seeing sunlight for the first time in twenty years.

And there, coming from under the bonnet, were flames. It’s strange how one reacts in a situation like this: I did 100 metres in eight seconds as I ran to get the cameraman, so that we could record this momentous event for all time.

Andy, mindful of the budget and how much it would cost us if the damned car burned out completely, behaved rather differently. He dived into a shop, which, miraculously, had some mineral water in the fridge. To the astonishment of the owner, he paid five bucks for one bottle and then poured the contents all over a car which, to the average Cuban, was worth rather less than that.

It worked out quite well in fact. We got some pictures and Andy got the fire out before too much damage was done. The only tragedy was that my drive in this important car was limited to one run down the Malecon seafront.

Communism had wrecked a car. And it has certainly wrecked Cuba, but I guess we were quite lucky really. It never actually got round to wrecking a planet.