CUBA • L'HAVANA on Motorcycle 🇨🇺 // Trip with Harley Davidson Sidecar and remain dry [ IT/ EN ]

HAVANA • CUBA on motorcycle. A ride through the neighborhoods of the city staying dry on a Harley Davidson sidecar
I have been traveling to Cuba for several years for work, this is the fifth time I fly to this beautiful Caribbean island. Sun, sea, palm trees, Rum and Pina Colada. It is a colorful, lively, cheerful and safe place, populated by people with a good and relaxed disposition. Cuba also has a romantic but troubled history linked to the myth of Fidel Castro's Revolution and the iconic image of Chè Guevara.
Cuba is very famous for the colorful American cars "Almendrones" (so-called because they are almond-shaped, but also affectionately called "old sands") and the Harley Davidson of the 1950s / 1960s still used today by Cubans as a means of personal transport. The persistent embargo on the island has not allowed the importation of cars and motorcycles since the mid-1900s. Those on the island actually become completely revised, adjusted and customized vehicles with makeshift components that are anything but original. It is no coincidence to see cars like Lada, Fiat, Volkswagen, with Buick, Dodge, Chevrolet, Packard, Cadillac, Ford, Studebaker engines, absurd setups, strange colors and changes to the Mad Max.
"It was almost 1959, with Batista as dictator, in Havana the mafia led by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. It was the time of the great summit of the Hotel Nacional in which the division of the drug business, prostitution and gambling was decided. With Castro and Che now upon us. In the Capri and Riviera hotels the American magnates stuffed with dollars, drunk with rum and with the Montecristo cigar between their teeth, even lost their underwear. And in the streets you met guys similar to the player Robert Redford from the movie "Havana", at the wheel of sparkling Almendrones to the background of a guaracha or a danzón.
Then, on New Year's Eve, the barbudos and habaneros arrived, finally free, smashed the parking meters and overturned the Baccarat tables. And the mobsters and Cubans with guilty consciences and suitcases stuffed with dollars fled to Florida on yachts, boats and rafts. Abandoning thousands of flaming cars with keys on the dashboard. The rest is the never-ending story of the Cold War. "
Today all this splendor is dissolving.
After Fidel's death and the dying out of the socialist dream of the revolution, the government, albeit still militated by the Castro family, seeks a slow globalization, which in fact it still does not like.
Young people who manage to work for the few foreign private companies earn more than 10 times the subsidy of their parents. With the first money they buy smartphones, connect to the few Wi-Fi in the city and discover that their "golden prison" was a big lie. Some young people run away, others buy their freedom.
After the end of subsidies from the former Soviet Union, Cuba is clashing with a people who are increasingly poor but increasingly aware of the external reality. Some dream of Europe, others still believe in it.
Too rapid globalization would lead to a heavy investment of private capital on the island, attracting speculators and criminals and transforming a very safe island into a new Las Vegas of the Caribbean.
EQUIPMENT
- GoPro Hero 10
- iPhone 11
- Nikon D850 + 35mm 1.4
THANKS TO
- Andrea Gallina
- Paseo 206 / / paseo206_boutiquehotel
- Home Deli / / homedelicuba
- Eclectico Resturant / / eclectico_restaurant
BY AND WITH
FRANCESCO ZANET
SITE www.francescozanet.com
IG / francesco.zanet
FB / about.zanet
A PLEN TUBO
IG / a_plen_tubo

[@serenagenovese]

Grande! Aspettiamo la prossima avventura :)

[@FrancescoZanet]

Arriva quella tosta!! 😎🤟

[@thetoma88]

La citazione nel finale è veramente TOP, prossime volte puartait ancje lui ator cun voaltris!

[@FrancescoZanet]

ahahah ci abbiamo pensato!! :D