Cuba Canoe Trip
After waiting to catch the Gulf Stream to propel me on, I was taken by surprise by a school of big water mammals knocking underneath the canoe in the water. At first I thought they were sharks then finally decided they were whales, then manatees, then dolphins. I never figuredout what they were, and they left as suddenly as they appeared, leaving me a little shaken. The next night it was clear, but I was lost and when I saw a light I was overjoyed and headed towards it. I didn’t know what it was: a house, a lighthouse, a searchlight, and when I finally reached it, I saw it was a lighthouse. A little way off was a sandbar, and I paddled there.
I had no idea, of course, that I had just landed on Fidel Castro’s Cuba. As soon as I touched down, flares went up and automatic machine guns were firing in my general direction. Several men in military uniforms tried to board the canoe, but if you’ve ever tried to get in a canoe in the water, you know it’s near to impossible. I didn’t mean to laugh at them—they were holding guns remember—but I succeeded in pissing them off until finally I was able to steady the canoe and one of the soldiers boarded and immediately put a pistol to my head.
Fidel Castro was angry that I was able to breach his security and land in his country, and he believed that I must be a spy. That’s the charge I was held on: espionage. And I was detained with several big-name American revolutionaries—communists and Black Panthers—which turned out to be of great interest to the FBI and CIA when I was later released. I was surprised at first to find out that people who had hijacked airplanes to Cuba and expected to be treated as heroes by Castro were instead treated like threats. As Lester Perry, one of the other detaineessaid, “The easiest thing in the world to do is to be a communist in a free country; but don’t try to be a communist in a communist country.” These hijackers were all political footballs. Neither China nor Russia wanted them, and they knew they would face extremely long prison sentences if they returned to the United States. They were my companions for most of the 45 days I spent in Cuba.
People often ask me how it felt to me—a man who was used to being unencumbered in every sense of the word—to be confined in Cuba. Well, first of all, no one is handcuffed in Cuba, or any communist country I found out, because they are basically waiting for an opportunity to shoot you in the back. Cuban prison food is some of the worse food I have ever tasted in my life, but Cuba is a poor country, and they don’t share what little good they have with undesirables. So, while all of us were free to walk to town for a few hours every night, even to party with some of the more-than-willing Cuban women, no one thought we would flee. After all, it’s an island and where are you going to go?
