A fine lunch, my best meal in Cuba: grilled lobster served with rice, green bean and avocado salad and fried plantain chips, followed by slices of fresh watermelon - all for 4CUC or just over $4.

In any coastal town, in Cuba, if you are offered a meal the choice is between lobster or fish and, incredibly, lobster costs no more. I eat it twice but I feel somehow vaguely guilty both times.

I am reminded of the dedication in The Hour of the Star, a book that was very important to me for a long time, by the Brazilian author, Clarice Lispector. She writes:

I dedicate this narrative to dear old Schumann and his beloved Clara who are now, alas, nothing but dust and ashes. I dedicate it to the deep crimson of my blood as someone in his prime. I dedicate it, above all, to those gnomes, dwarfs, sylphs, and nymphs who inhabit my life. I dedicate it to the memory of my years of hardship when everything was more austere and honourable, and I had never eaten lobster.

As I ride along the coast, a huge edifice appears on the horizon.

... which soon looms gigantically to the right of the highway.

I am intrigued by the structure which is, according to the LP guide, a nuclear power station that was abandoned before completion when Russia’s aid to Cuba dried up after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As I ride past the station I spy a road leading towards it and circle back to investigate. I approach stopping periodically to take photos. I am still some distance from the building when I see a couple of guys approaching me staggering under the weight of a metal beam. They greet me as I pass.

A little further I cross a small bridge over a ditch and notice some words scrawled on the concrete under my wheels: “No pase!” I look around. A makeshift sign repeats the message with the additional information that the area is a military zone. No-one is around so I go on and then hesitate. The two guys reappear.

“Can I go and look?”

“You can go a bit further,” they say.

So I ride on. I stop again and the men catch up with me. Two more men appear from the direction of the building and they all watch me take photos.

“I’d love to go inside.”

“Come on. Follow us.”

We make our way towards the building. The men gesture towards the left and tell me that is the military area. They direct me along a road that skirts an open space while they cut across diagonally it and then make a signal for me to be quiet. We are standing now between too smaller building near the entrance to the monolithic core building. I lean my bike against a wall to take another photo. One man creeps forward and peers around the corner of the building and them beckons us across the open space.

A cryptic inscription*, in both Russian and Spanish, adorns the wall above the entrance to the building...

We enter the building. Inside is a huge echoing cavernous space and I stand gazing up into the dark void above me in awe.

“Would you like to go up?”

“Yes!”

The men tell me to bring my bike inside and we hide it in a dark corner.

“Light!,” one of the man demands.

I rummage in my handle bar bag for my headlamp and hand it to him. He leads the way to a pitch black stairwell and, grabbing my hand, starts upwards into to darkness.

...which is filled with mysterious structures...

...and cavernous spaces.

We leave the stairwell and walk through a confusing maze of hallways and chambers. The floor is strewn with debris which we stumble over, noisily, in the dark.

“Shhhh.”

There are irregular openings in the outer walls of the building and we stop at them to admire the view. Voices outside alert us to the presence of the not-so-watchful military keepers of this place and we crouch down until they pass. They men show off their favourite views to me and insist I take photos studying me carefully as I do.

My guides insist that I take photos....

... of all their favourite views.

An incredible amount of resources must have been invested here.

We return down the stairs and into the main space but our lookout signals for us to retreat again into a side hallway and we sit in the semi-darkness. Conversation keeps arising when we forget that we are supposed to be hiding quietly. I question the men about history of the power station and the nature of their clandestine recycling business. They tell me if they are caught scavenging for scrap here the penalty is a relatively small fine and they don’t seem very concerned by the prospect.

Eventually we creep out of the building and the men accompany me back to the road before returning to their stealthy gradual dismantling of the enormous structure.

* If anyone can work out what the inscription above the door says, I would love to know.

The area around the bay is mostly swamp and the home of a huge range of indigenous wildlife. I manage to find some sections of dirt road traversing forest and mangroves where the only other traffic is the occasional horse and cart. I stop and brave clouds of mosquitoes in order to admire some of Cuban endemic birds. I would dearly love to see the bumble-bee hummingbird, the world’s smallest bird, but I am not such a lucky or skillful birdwatcher. I do, however, see a couple of Cuban tody, another tiny bird, and a score of Cuban trogon.

Children play in small cenote by the side of a dirt back road running parallel to the coast around the Bahia de Conchinos.

More colourful land crabs. They are slightly spooky, these creatures, and more than a little self-destructive. They scuttle madly back and forth across roads in a suicidal manner. I did my best but I crushed at least three or four under my wheels.

I arrive in Playa Giron, which is home to another museum documenting the history of the Bays of Pigs invasion.

Another museum devoted to the history of the invasion. The exhibition is informative and ends with a moving display of photos of, and pesonal items belonging to, each of the 176 Cubans who died defending their country during the attack.

Riding from Playa Giron I follow a unpaved track that runs along 40 odd kilometres of largely uninhabited coastline. The only settlement I pass through is a village of charcoal makers where I stop for a much-needed meal of eggs, beans and rice.

This area is the tradional home of charcoal makers. These logs of wood are piled up and then covered with earth and burnt to create charcoal.

A family I spent some time with.

Flowers, a gift from a young girl, to decorate my beloved Cuban hat (which disappeared sadly during a storm on my last night in Cuba).

The deserted coast offers a wild choice of excellent camp sites and I stop early in the afternoon..

Another great place to camp. Tide pools on the rocky coast between Playa Giron and Castillo de Jagua and some more wild weather...

...to provide more opportunities for storm watching over the sea.

I love hermit crabs, they are so shy.

This is the good life.

An image to prove I do occasionally get off my bike and just chill out. I spend a happy, happy day here, in the company of four French girls, swimming, snorkelling and, most miraculously, diving.

There are so many things I have no words to describe. The underwater world of the Bahia de Conchinos is amazingly beautiful. Diving is magical: it is like flying in a dream.

In the evening, I find a little hiding spot by the water's edge to put up my tent...

...and watch the water...

...in all its many...

...and varied hues.

Then, I watch the sun go down...

...and finally, a storm, over the water, far out to sea.

I discover that Australia is a small sugar mill town, about 35 kilometres from the Bahia de Cochinos and that it played a pivotal role in the sorry and sordid affair of the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

It could almost be Australia - somewhere in Far North Queensland or the Northern Territory.

Australia's fortunes have revolved around this disused sugar factory. Very Australian.

Australia was the site of the command centre where Fidel orchestrated the successful defense against the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion. In Cuba, the Bay of Pigs incident is referred to as La Victoria. This building houses a museum with information, photos and artefacts relating to La Victoria.

A bomb nestling in parachute silk.

A strategically marked map.

Fidel.

Un-Australia.

I reach the west side of Havana at about 5.30pm and there have clearly been recent heavy rains. The roads are awash with water and before long I am drenched by spray from passing traffic and my own wheels. The smell is vile.

I cross the bay on the ferry to Casablanca and start casing for a place to camp but it is not until it is almost completely dark that I find a suitable thicket of trees beside a road paralleling the freeway east of Havana. I put up my tent, strip off my stinking cloths and munch a few crackers and museli bars before falling asleep to the un-soothing music of freeway traffic.

I wake to find a disturbing infestation of wood lice in every crack and crevice of all my belongs. My hat, particularly, is full of them.

Poor little piggy! Beach-side cuisine: roast pork rolls are one of Cuban street food's better offerings.

A giant millipede - this thing is about 20 centimetres long. I spot it when I stop on the highway to buy some mangos from a house by the side of the road.

I ride along the coast to Vadadero, a tourist beach resort precinct that seems just too similar to Cancun for me to actually enter and continue riding towards Cardernas.

I find myself for a second night camped within metres of the freeway and this time there are no sheltering trees. There is only a dripping pipeline – radiating heat, that runs beside the road, to hide behind. I stop when it is dark and pitch my tent in the rain with mosquitoes whining thirstily around me. Car headlights play across my tent as I munch on dry crackers and museli bars. This is the camping low-light of my Cuba trip.

A day of riding on a tedious highway can be redeemed in an instant by ten minutes of glorious evening light. A double rainbow arches over the road and everything is transformed.

The following morning I swing away from the north coast and start to ride south across sugar cane fields and citrus orchards.

Riding across Cuba's flat agricultural centre I came across a wierd area criss-crossed by a regular gridwork of roads. Apartment blocks, apparently unused, are regularly placed on the grid. I stopped by for a closer look at this one and a woman caretaker instantly appears. She gives me some cold water but I can't glean adequately from her what the buildings are for or who, if anyone - apart from her, lives here.

The castle gates - no, actually, it's the entrance - or in my case, the exit - to La Guira National Park. The land was a privately owned hacienda pre-revolution and I'm guessing the grandiose crenallations date from then. This road is marked as a main road on the map but it's a pretty rough windy little track through the hills with scarcely any traffic.

A lot of bee-keeping goes on in Cuban. These hive are sitting alongside a main road.

My aim for the day is Las Terrazas, a settlement billed as Cuba’s exemplary eco-village. The project was initiated in the late 60s as a reforestation initiative to combat the environmental devastation caused, largely, by the unsustainable and exploitative agricultural practices of colonial coffee plantations in the 19th century. Reforestation is still provides most employment in the area but tourism, built on ecologically sustainable models, is also very important to the community.

Las Terrazas is a project developed in the 70s to regenerate a badly degraded coffee-growing area.

It is a peaceful kind of place...

... and I get to camp, for a small fee, beside the beautiful San Juan river with its lovely cascades and deep swimming holes. During the day the place is swarming with visitors - August in summer holiday time - but the evening and early morning were blissfully quiet. I lounge in the natural pools with only a couple of young people picking out aluminium cans out of yesterday's unfortunate litter for company.