Trip Report
Part travelogue, part lifestyle advice and (a very small) part sales pitch, Lynette Chiang’s program introduced us to both her spunky philosophy of life and her bike trip through Cuba. A lively speaker with a personal touch, Lynette told how she quit her job in Australia seven years ago, bought a round-the-world airline ticket and set out with her bike on an adventure that’s still unfolding.
She still has the same $5,000 in the bank she started out with - thanks to frugal habits, a willingness to rough it and many jobs along the way, including: stints as an ad copy writer (very successful), a waitress (fired after three weeks) and a chef (for three months). Her approach to life: don’t study something; try it out first to see if you like it. To people who marvel at her risk tolerance she says, “If you thought too hard about things, you wouldn’t go out the door.”
Cuba is off-limits to U.S. citizens and you can be fined for going, but a quiet side trip to Cuba from Costa Rica will probably escape the notice of U.S. authorities, according to Lynette. (By the way, one Obsidian in the audience had been to Cuba - Dot Leland, in 1986.) Tourists are the Cuban government’s cash cow, so they want to be sure you have a good time…hence the requirement that you stay in hotels and guesthouses licensed for foreigners. But Lynette was traveling on a shoestring and looking for a different kind of experience. In most places she found friendly Cubans willing to risk putting her up in their unauthorized guesthouses. Others welcomed her into their modest homes and shared meals with her (invariably beans and rice, with cabbage and perhaps some tough pork).
Lynette likes to travel light; the less stuff you have, the less you have to keep track of. For three months in Cuba she got by with the contents of two panniers, her tent (seldom used) and a small bag on her handlebars. She showed us one essential item - a little black dress for special occasions, in its own tiny stuff sack. With so little gear and her fold-up bike, Lynette was able to hop a train or hitch rides in cars, trucks and even on a boat.
There were few cars on the roads in Havana, and even fewer in the countryside - great for biking - but Lynette ended up taking a train from Havana east to the other end of the island and biking back, to have the prevailing wind at her back. Everywhere in Cuba she found people friendly, neatly dressed (the grungy look isn’t popular there) and poor, but far from destitute. With daily ration cards for food no one goes hungry and there is free medical care, provided by doctors who earn about $25 a month! Monthly incomes for most people average $7 to $17. With an economy like this, there are few places to shop or eat out. Lynette was glad she had a Tupperware container along so she could carry food (rice and beans, of course).
Havana was sprinkled with stunning, but poorly maintained, colonial buildings that often housed small capitalist entrepreneurs who refilled lighters or patched tires. There were plenty of hustlers, but they hustled in “the nicest possible way.” Besides Havana, we saw slides of Cayo Granma, a beautiful island near Santiago de Cuba; Castle Morro, praised by Lynette even though she admitted to being “castled-out” after the British Isles; Mazanillo, with its ceramic sunflower memorial to Celia Sanchez, Fidel Castro’s longtime confidante; and the mountainous eastern region of the island, with its balsa trees and oddly shaped limestone formations. But most of all we saw people and especially children - the friends Lynette made among people she found unpretentious, warm and welcoming.
After the program, Lynette demonstrated her touring bike, custom-made to fit the buyer, like all Bike Friday bicycles. Lynette’s proud of the company and thinks we should be too. They’re a local success story. Only 12 years old, they sell five to seven bikes a day, most to buyers over 50, who like the low crossbar, and to well-known cyclists like Greg Lamont.
One last thing: Yes, we did see a slide of “the handsomest man in Cuba” and, frankly, he’s not worth making the trip for. But that’s also the name of Lynette’s fascinating book about traveling in Cuba, available at the Eugene Public Library (or buy an autographed copy from her). - Beth Kodam.
