Cuba, from Tip to Tail

Esquire, April, 2000 by Wil S. Hylton

I am lost. Or rather, we are lost. My buddy Lou and I, two skinny yanquis in the middle of Cuba, drenched with sweat, doubled over our bicycles, gasping for breath, exhausted. It's late and dark and hot and sticky. We've come sixty miles today, lugging two hundred pounds of equipment, and despite our best efforts to stay on the main road, we ended up here, inside a field of sugarcane. Yes, inside it, buried in it, wedged between twelve-foot stalks, which are over us like a canopy, painting the navy sky in narrow black streaks. We'd happily get on our bikes and cycle out of here if only we knew where "here" was, if only we knew which way was out.

I'm holding our map under Lou's dim headlamp, searching for a clue to our whereabouts, when I hear a sound in the distance. A low,...