Lorena is Cuba’s only female body boarder. Photo: Calvo
Yaya is the other half of the Cuban women’s surf team, and is a little older than Lorena. I think she must be in her late 20s. She’s the girlfriend of Eduardo, the head of Cuban Surfing, and is the only regular board-riding female. She and Eduardo became dear friends and my lifeline through the whole bank account debacle. I was eventually rescued by the Canadian Embassy (yeah, Canada you rock!), but in the beginning they offered to hide me in their homes and share their food rations. This is a big deal because in Cuba housing a foreigner can land you a $1,000 fine. Not to mention their food rations are pretty skimpy.
Even though my Spanish stinks, Yaya and I spent a lot of time together. I was excited to have a local tour guide, and she was stoked to see another female surfer. “I would love to have visiting with us surfers, not necessarily pros, but we would like that they would be women surfers too,” she tells me. “And not just that, also for sharing, going out at night, exchange some opinions, to meet each other.”
I brought both girls a copy of WSSM (Women’s Surf Style Magazine), only to find no one in Cuba had ever seen a chicks surf mag before! Eduardo told me Yaya stayed up all night reading it, asking him to help translate so she could understand.
After almost a month in the country, I was both relieved and sad to leave Cuba. If it wasn’t for my suitcase full of rum and cigars I probably would have thought the whole trip was a dream. I also have a bunch of their letters to post, as international mail never seems to make it out of Cuba. For me, communism was something I never really thought about, but for the Cuban surfers it’s reality. I guess the plus side is that no one’s starving; the down side is that you make around $15 a month no matter how hard you work.
To anyone considering a trip to Cuba, I highly recommend it. The hospitality and generosity of the local surfers will absolutely stoke you out, plus the girls there really need some female surf company. And to think I used to complain about the lack of girls in the lineup!
To find out more about Cuban surfing visit royal70.net.
