To anyone considering a trip to Cuba, I highly recommend it. Old Havana. Photo: Tia Calvo
Cuba: The land of Fidel, quality cigars and $3 bottles of rum. After years of covering pro surfers in Hawaii I wanted a new story. One with some bite. So I headed off to find Cuba’s small and dedicated group of women surfers: “The Cubanitas.”
I brought a bunch of surf gear to donate to the girls. Due to trade embargoes they don’t have access to basic surf equipment and rely entirely on what visitors leave behind. I know Cuba is isolated, but I thought I was prepared for anything. I mean, I’m a well-seasoned third world globe trotter right?
Wrong. Cuba can dish out quite a few curve balls. First off, my Australian bank card failed, because it was really American – leaving me stranded with no money. Second, I was staying with a crazy Afro Cuban Voodoo family who liked to sacrifice animals in the front yard. Plus, my shower electrocuted me several times. But all of this was worth it to see first hand the lives of the local Havana surfers.
So back to the Cubanitas – I was so excited to track them down and get to work. This was short lived when I discovered they didn’t exist. My information had come from a Cuban surfing website, which has not been updated in a very very long time. Internet is not allowed in Cuban homes and can only be accessed for around $8 an hour in upmarket hotels. When your average Cuban wage is $15 a month, this leaves a majority of the population completely disconnected from the online world.
Yaya and Lorena: The Last Cubanitas. Photo: Tia Calvo
What I did find was allegedly Cuba’s last two remaining women surfers, Lorena and Yaya – the lone Cubanitas. So what happened to everyone else? A combination of transport and gear issues made it all too difficult. Everyone lived on different ends of town, and no one could afford a car. And Cuban surf breaks don’t make things any easier either! Rocky shore lines, choppy wind swell, and sea urchins make easy victims of the unsuspecting tourist and learner surfer. It seems there were some girls interested in learning, but that interest was rather short lived.
Lorena is Cuba’s only female body boarder. She’s 20 years old and studies biology at the local university. In most ways she reminds me of your average young surf girl. She likes to party, hang with friends, and walks to the beach to surf in her spare time. One day I helped Lorena to patch her board. The thing is an ancient, warped blue rubber mess. It looks like it’s been left out in the backyard for a couple of years. Even finding glue for repairs is difficult here.
“This one (board) is five years old,” she tells me. “It was from a woman surfer who wanted to meet me. At the end of her trip she left her bodyboard here with me in Cuba to practice with. Here, it’s more complicated for women than men to find the right surf gear, because most of the time we have men visiting us. For example, the men will donate their fins – but for me the fins that I use are a smaller size.”
What really stuck in my mind though is the lack of freedom for travel. The surfers would tell me about places they wanted to visit, but government restrictions don’t allow it. Most people told me stories about partners, friends and family who have moved away to the US. In Lorena’s bedroom one of her walls is covered in hand written messages. I asked her what they said.
“This is like a mosaic,” she explains. “A lot of my Cuban friends who left the country, they came to sign the wall before they went. I try to have all my friends sign up, it leaves me with nice memories.”
But yet there is still an element of support and respect for the government system. Evidence of this lies in photographic form, framed above Lorena’s bed. She points at the picture and tells me “This is Ernesto Guevara, the “Che”. He was someone who came to Cuba to fight for the revolution and that stuff. He is my boyfriend, because I love him. It’s not the fact that he was a revolutionary, it’s just that I like him.”
