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Dilip D'Souza

Baracoa is far more peaceful today than it must have been in Hatuey's time. In the hours we spent walking the streets, the loudest sounds we heard were on the Malecon, when the waves flung themselves at the sea wall. It's not that the streets were deserted, not at all. Baracoa's residents do all kinds of interesting things outside their homes.

One evening, we passed a small group of older women, toning up their muscles with a spot of aerobics, waving cheerily at us. Several behinds of several men poked out from under a battered old car that had broken down in the middle of the road. Not that there was any danger of traffic being disrupted: cars that actually move are rare aberrations in Baracoa.

In a narrow lane, someone was playing music and about a dozen young girls had lined up to dance. No more than ten years old, they swayed and pranced, sensuously and lithely. On a doorstep, a teenager called Alejandro proudly showed us what had just arrived for him from a friend in the USA: a huge Webster's Dictionary. Out on the Malecon, two mothers returning from the market posed for a photograph, giggling uncontrollably and refusing to allow their shopping bags into the photograph because they were "too fat." The bags, that is.

Later, we met Castro. Not Fidel, but a short, bustling and cheerful look-alike. Miguel Castro, a historian at the Matachin Museum, was to act as guide for a team that had come from Havana to make a film about Baracoa. Since we wanted to see the surroundings, why didn't we join them? No charge, and we could even star in the film! So it was that early one morning, he knocked on our door at La Rusa, bundled us into a rattletrap bus with the team and off we went.

The four men on the team called themselves "Los Locos" or "The Madmen" and it didn't take long to see why. Within minutes, a bottle of strong rum was open and making the rounds in the bus. Castro and the madmen were downing the stuff neat, gulps at a time, becoming more loquacious with each gulp.

Orlando, a 50 year old with a wily wink, regaled us with outrageous tales from his experiences in Angola, where Cuba sent thousands of men to fight in the war of independence in the '70s. In all of the tales, Pedro, another of the four, played a prominent part. Pedro, said Orlando, was always afraid of wild animals (wink wink) making noises (wink roar wink) in the jungle, but Orlando would tell him to relax (wink) and have some rum (wink wink wink chuckle).

They made fun of each other like this all day, but the bond of affection and respect they shared was obvious.

Directed by Castro, we were suddenly at a small chunk of Paradise: a tiny cove on which two people would be a crowd. Gentle waves from an intensely blue sea rolled onto the little beach. Above it was Villa Maguana, a hotel with all of four rooms, all empty, against a backdrop of trees. It was a spot to fall in love with. Which we did, arranging to return to spend our last couple of days in Baracoa here. Not even Castro's -- Fidel's -- bedroom at La Rusa could compare with two days entirely alone in this exquisite place.

Meanwhile, the madmen busied themselves with their equipment, steady and professional in spite of, or maybe because of, the severely depleted bottle of rum. Besides bringing us to the loveliest spot in all of Cuba, Castro had also stopped to pick up a girl he said was the loveliest in all of Baracoa, so that she could star in the film too. Teenaged, fresh-faced, smiling Marlena joined us quite readily, needing little persuasion to change into shorts and a swimsuit for her role.

And while she swam and looked pretty for the cameras, we sat down for a drink of menta -- a strong mint drink -- with Alejandro Hartman, historian and curator of the Matachin Museum, also along for the ride. This literate, learned man has attained a measure of fame for his knowledge of the area. Guides and other books that mention Baracoa invariably urge visitors to meet Hartman, a soft-spoken, gentle sort who is happy to talk about Baracoa, Cuba, Fidel, Marxism or anything at all.

Over menta and black coffee, Hartman told us about Baracoa's most enduring myth: that this was where Christopher Columbus first set foot in Cuba, that he brought the ancient cross in the church from Spain in the early 1490s. While the cross is known to date to at least 1510, opinions about the story differ wildly. A study in the mid-1980s concluded that the cross was made of wood that belonged very much to Cuba. Even so, Hartman believes the tale. According to him, Columbus's description in his diary of what he saw matches Baracoa's surroundings.

I don't know about that, but if he did come to Baracoa, I do understand why Columbus wrote this in his diary: "A thousand tongues would not suffice to describe the things of novelty and beauty I saw, for it was all like a scene of enchantment."

I understand, because we felt that enchantment too.

Now I want to see that film winking-Orlando and his friends made, but not because we starred in it. They assured us that films turn out best when shot on numerous gulps of good Cuban rum. Can that be true? Or is it just another Baracoa myth?

Photographs by Dilip D'Souza

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