We abandoned the bikes in favor of a rattling Fiat to visit Commandancia La Plata, Castro's revolution headquarters. The collection of wooden huts are reached on foot only after descending and then climbing the steepest roads in Cuba. Once at the top we walked along a ridge, the valley spread out below and Pico Turquino, the country's highest mountain, looming above us.
Our cycle route ran north of the mountains, and over the next couple of days we almost lost sight of them altogether. The road was completely flat, cutting through monochrome fields of sugar cane and endless banana plantations. And though I could hardly believe it, I missed the hills. Cycling without them is boring and we were actually relieved to start climbing again. The climb took us over a high ridge and then dropped us at breakneck speed down to the shore of the Caribbean, which we would follow for 200km back to Santiago. This was, without doubt, the most spectacular road we cycled in Cuba. It snakes over the foothills, traverses cliffs then plunges back to the sea. This coast was ravaged by the hurricanes of 2005, and large sections of the road had collapsed or been washed away. At one point, we had to cycle over a bridge so buckled it looked like it was made of Plasticine.
The day before we got back to Havana, we cycled 165km, partly because of a dearth of places to stay but mainly because we could. Our journey of nearly 2,000km was almost at an end. We'd become utterly bewitched by Cuba's quirkiness and unpredictability and we'd also discovered that we really loved cycling. Even uphill. Pedalling back along the Malecon, Havana's decrepit grandeur on our left, crashing waves and kissing couples on our right we were already planning where we would go next time.
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