How the Celia Sanchez ride came about
Around 1998, I went to an all-inclusive resort in Guardalavaca. It was my first such holiday and I soon became bored with the lack of action. I rented a car and drove to Las Tunas, about 140k’s away, to meet an old friend (Colin Hearth) who was living there. He talked me into starting a bicycle tour business and hooked me up with a government tour agent. Ulysses, the agent met a few times over the next two years, gong over details.
We decided we needed a trailer. It was a lot of work getting parts to Cuba to build the trailer; I remember taking wheels complete with tires and an axle, onto the plane as checked luggage. It would not be possible to do these days. To be truthful the trailer was a hugely bad idea. The design was good and construction was good enough but the hitch snapped off our small bus. We roped the hitch to the bumper of the bus and dragged it to a hotel in the mountains, I never saw it again. I swore never to build another and devised a method of removing seats inside a larger bus. Ironically I do have a trailer but it is restricted to use within the city. The roads are simply too bad to have a skimpy little trailer dangling off the back of a bus.
We formed a company called Niagara Safari and advertised our tours at possibly the worst time in air travel history, the August before the 9-11 airplane attacks on the twin towers. We had a fair number of bookings and as soon as the attacks hit everyone cancelled and nobody responded to our advertising. This was possibly the safest time in aviation history to fly but the public were not buying the pleas of the airlines. It took me from that dreadful day in September, all the way to early April of the following year, to assemble a group of 3 plus me. This was going to be a loser but we went for it. The fact that we only had three clients was to prove a good thing once we lost the trailer, on a dirt road close to El Salton, a hotel in the mountains.
Having no idea of the geography of Cuba, I left the route up to my new friend Ulysses. The travel was handled by a Canadian travel agent and at that time I had never heard of Celia Sanchez and named the ride as Círculo de la Sierra Maestra. Our first ride was only 8 days long. Lucky for me the riders were all strong. The next mistake was not understanding the wind and we rode the South Road into an easterly wind coming off the Atlantic. The ride ended in Santiago and was full of mistakes that every start-up tour company must go through.
I did enjoy the cycling and was ready to do the same again but was hit with bad news, which turned into good news. Universitur the government agency was closed down, I suppose the fact they could not organise a piss-up in a brewery has something to do with that. Anyway I was stranded without a government agent. Ulysses offered to help me and we agreed to meet in Havana, where I was introduced to another agency who proved worse than the original. Any way it was not all bad, this is how I met Ana, my wife. She was to help me understand the idiosyncrasies of Cuba. It would take a few years before I ventured back to the east of Cuba, discover the existence of Celia and realize her importance in the outcome of Fidel’s revolution. My good friend Karine Langley suggested I re-name this tour in honour of Celia. It has gone on to be my favourite tour and for good reason.