On assignment in Cuba, I rented a car and was driving from Moron to Santa Clara, and the map was unclear. It was late in the day and I was running low on gas. I picked up this young guy at a roundabout, hoping he could give me directions. Right away he pointed at a road, and off we went. But as it started getting dark (and my gas needle kept dropping), I began to think I?d been duped. About 90 minutes out, we came upon this tiny village, where he asked me to stop: This was his home. He leapt out of the car without a word ? wouldn?t tell me if I was even close to Santa Clara. I headed back to Moron, running on fumes and cursing my trickster hitcher the whole way. ? Joe Yogerst
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Cuba lost $6 billion in Soviet subsidies, and the public transportation system died. There were so few private vehicles and buses running between towns that people formed orderly queues at underpasses, offramps, etc. I stopped at an underpass outside Havana driving a Hyundai made for five small people. We crammed in 12. The cops waved me over and said, ?Hey, you know it?s illegal to pick up hitchhikers???I panicked; I was already in the country illegally as a journalist. ?That?s OK,? they said, and squeezed in so I could give them a lift. ? Jad Davenport
I hired a car in Cuba -during its economic nadir of the early 1990s and drove to Pinar del Rio ? mine was the only vehicle on the highway. At villages en route, dozens of Cubans were gathered at bus stations desperate for rides, so I often picked up hitchhikers. One woman kept asking questions. When I went into a store to grab some water, I came back to find her going through my notebooks. I guess she?d figured out I was a journalist. I went ahead and took her to Havana but got paranoid, thinking she?d report me to the secret police (which Cubans swear is the only efficient thing on the island). ?Tony Perrottet
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