Breezed into Santa Clara early Monday morning thrilled that I hadn´t missed my stop. Most travelers I´ve spoken to recommend skipping Santa Clara except for checking out the Ernesto ´Che´Guevara Memorial so I stretched my legs, bought a ticket for Cienfuegos leaving in 3 hours and headed out the door. The taxi drivers all pestered me as to why I would want to walk the seven odd blocks to the memorial. Go figure. The statue of Che at the memorial is bigger than life and I could see the top of it practically as soon as I left the bus station. Like the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana, there is a huge open square in front of the looming life-like statue. The museum wasn´t open but just seeing the memorial was enough for me. I love Che!
On my way back to the bus station i found a food stall with lots of people milling around it. There I picked up an amazing ´special´omelette sandwich with cheese and a delicious lemon drink for about 50 cents. The bus to Cienfuegos was not the usual tourist fare. It was a local non air conditioned bus and I think I passed out a few times because of the heat. Th town is tiny so it was easy to walk from the station to look for a place to stay before heading out to find a place to dump all the pictures from my camera´s memory stick. The photo service was crazy full and I was told to come back at 8pm that night. Great. I walked up and down all on the waterfront and back to the main plaza with its ritzy hotels and beautiful architecture. I freed up as much space as I could from my camera and took as many shots as I could. When I returned to the photo service place at 8pm I was told that he was busy doing something else and I should come back the next day. I haven´t seriously had to beg much on this trip but I sure did prostrate myself that night. I battered him down until he finally did it I´m sure just to get rid of me.
I wanted to head to Playa Giron the next day but there were no buses and none in the foreseeable future from what I could tell so I purchased a ticket for Trinidad, the town everyone always raves about when that talk about Cuba. Had a little mix up at the station so I had to find a different place to stay than the place I´d booked. No worries, it was low season and pretty much every house in Trinidad is a casa particular. I headed out to check out the small cobblestoned town and quickly found myself lost. the streets all spiral outward in a sort of spiderweb design which is a bit confusing. I found my way down to a less touristy area when the drinks were cheap and there was a line of houses selling ham and cheese sandwiches and fruit milk shakes (I think it was milk) out of their windows. They were to become my close close friends over the next four days as the food in Trinidad is ridiculously overpriced. The sky clouded over and I ducked in to a nearby bar to escape out of the rain and into my book. This is the best part of Cuba for me, just taking it easy and relaxing in cafes. It´s a bit like Morocco for me that way except that instead of drinking mint tea, people drink beer all day.
Spent the next day out exploring the touristy area which really is as beautiful as everyone says. The houses are all beautiful pastels and no one has glass window. They open up their wooden shutter and doors to let the cool air in the morning and evening and hide inside during the day. All the Cubans for the most part think I´m a tourist and I get pestered all day long with ´Pssst, Pssst´. Drives me absolutely crazy and not in the good way!More ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch but I actually found someone selling real ham as opposed to the processed stuff that is so common here so I´ve found a new best friend. In the afternoon I headed to the historical museum in the Plaza Mayor where I climbed a tour which is the highest point in Trinidad for the beautiful views of the town. What til you see the pictures!
That night i decide to check out the nightlife. Most live music didn´t start until 10pm but all the clubs are so close to each other it was easy to check each one out. I stayed for a while at one club that had African singing and drums. The music was a bit chaotic for my taste but really interesting to watch. There was a group of tourists from one of the ritzy hotels with their African dance teacher. It was pretty amusing watching them get up to dance but their teacher got up afterwords and put on a little show. His legs were moving so fast and so gracefully I couldn´t take my eyes off of him. When the band packed up to go I headed next door and up the large stone steps to the Casa de la Musica, tourist central. There was some sort of live extravaganza going on but I couldn´t figure it out for the life of me. Lots of whistle and fire and dancing and drums. Once they left the salsa dancing started. It was mostly Cubans trying to pick up tourists but salsa is always beautiful to watch.
I got up early the next day to try and catch the tourist train down to see some of the sites outside of the city but I ended up arriving 10 minutes too late. I found out later that the time on my alarm clock was set incorrectly. Change of plans, I found a place to rent a bicycle and headed to the beach. Cuba is a great place to bike around because most of the roads are dead flat. It took about 20 minutes to reach the shore at a town called La Boca and then another 20 minutes to make it down to Playa Ancon where all the package tourist hide out in style. Luckily its low season so the beach was pretty empty. The water was warmer than most baths I take. Nice for wading around and relaxing. I found a small converted bus selling beer and dove into my book for the better part of the afternoon. On the way back I stopped at a small restaurant on the water for a delicious seafood dinner before the last push home. The sun had sapped my energy and I felt almost ready to collapse by the time I made it back to Trinidad after peddling though a mild rain storm. Thank God for naps.
Back out on the town in the evening. The rain had caused havoc with performances because most of the bars have outdoor music venues. Casa de la Trouva had a great band that night that they moved inside and I hung out there for as long as I could until the band finally went off. I went back to check out Casa de la Musica and was befriended by two crazy Cuban girls. We laughed and danced and were all ready to head in to the after hours club but it was postponed/canceled because the DJ hadn´t shown up. That´s Cuba I suppose.
My last day in Trinidad was a horseback riding expedition to the Valle de los Ingenieros. The countryside was stunning and it was my first time on a horse while it was actually galloping. I´m not sure my back will ever be the same. We rode for a little over an hour to a small waterfall and swimming hole and then headed to a small sugar cane farm where they made ups fresh sugar cane juice and the owner´s crazy older brother even performed a few tunes for us on the guitar. Back in town I had to catch a taxi to see the one site in the Valle de los Ingenieros that we´d missed that I had really wanted to see. It´s an old slave watch tower that you can climb. It was very tall and thin like a lighthouse and I was amazed at just how far you could see from the top. There were women at the bottom making lace and embroidering white tablecloths that you see sold all over Trinidad. They told me a bit about the history of the area before it was time to head off back to Trinidad. No partying for me tonight. It´s back to Havana and then hopefully either north or east for a little diving. Ciao
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