Trinidad, a Gem of Colonial Style

---

Trinidad, a Gem of Colonial Style

Leaving Cienfuegos we travelled across some fairly uninteresting rolling hills for about an hour to Trinidad, where the restaurant supposedly booked for lunch was full to the rafters. We drove out instead to the Valle de los Ingenios, part of the Trinidad World Heritage Site. The landscapes here are big and quite attractive, but there is not a whole lot to see; it was a principal sugar cane production area until the region’s economy took a nose-drive in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the ruins of some forty sugar mills (ingenios) apparently lie buried beneath the vegetation. At an old eighteenth century estate, Manaca Iznaga, developed by a Spanish slave-trader and sporting a 44-meter water tower, we finally got to eat some lunch.

On the way back to Trinidad we stopped briefly at a strategically-positioned lookout point offering a panoramic view across the valley before continuing to our hotel, Motel Las Cuevas, on the top of a breezy hill just outside town.

After a siesta, we decided we couldn’t gather up the energy to go into Trinidad for dinner, so we had well-deserved cocktails at the bar followed by a tourist buffet dinner in air-conditioned comfort - and what bliss it was to have a choice other than just “pork, chicken or fish?”

We spent Tuesday morning wandering around the pretty town of Trinidad. Founded in 1514 by a Spanish conquistador, Trinidad was just the third settlement on the island of Cuba but it sank into obscurity not many years later when Cortez passed through and recruited most of the settlers to join him in his highly successful expedition to Mexico. After a hundred or more years when its claim to fame was as a centre for piracy and illicit slave trading, the town leapt back to prominence with the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century arrival of French settlers and the establishment of a booming sugar industry - by 1850 Trinidad accounted for perhaps one third of Cuba’s total sugar production. A few years later, however, as the wars of independence took their toll on this region, the focus of sugar cane production shifted elsewhere, and Trinidad went into a recession from which it would not recover until tourism produced something of a recovery about thirty years ago.

The good news from all of this is that the grand buildings erected on the proceeds of the sugar boom have remained pretty well unaltered over the past hundred and thirty years since there was little economic activity to warrant anyone’s investment. And with a timely adoption as a World Heritage Site in 1988, restoration work has been largely faithful to the original designs.

The main Plaza Mayor is an exquisite miniature of a grand square and, as I write this, it is one of the few squares in the world I can instantly visualise just thinking about it. It is exceptionally attractive, with half a dozen modestly sized main buildings and the parish church of Santísima Trinidad, a relatively utilitarian late nineteenth century edifice on the northeast corner. One of the beautifully proportioned buildings is the two-storey Palacio Brunet built in 1808 and converted into the Museo Románitico, full of delightful eighteenth and nineteenth century furnishings. Nearby, just off the Plaza Mayor, is the iconic pastel yellow bell-tower of the former San Francisco de Asis convent, now a museum about the 1960’s war against the “hill bandits”. Right in front is a tiny square boasting a magnificent Flame of the Forest tree carrying the densest blossoming of stiff, bright, orange flowers I have ever seen.

Later in the morning as the temperature rose with the mid-summer sun we sought refuge in one of several lively bars just off the main square, the Casa de la Trova. As we replenished our liquid intake with coffee, water and beer we listened to some likeable Cuban son and watched a local family enjoying themselves on the dance floor.

Lunch was in a mercifully air-conditioned private room at Restaurante Don Antonio - good food, nice spot, amusing conversation. During a cigarette break outside Don Antonio’s, a woman passing by started up a conversation with me. She was perhaps in her late twenties, passably attractive, and spoke pretty good English (unusual in Cuba); after a while she asked if I would like to go back to her house and “meet the family”; in my extensive experience of suggestive come-ons, a quite unique approach. When I replied with a smile that I had better ask my wife before taking her up on her kind invitation, she grinned widely and sashayed off down the deserted noonday street.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the Tienda Universo, probably the closest Cuba gets to a supermarket, and clearly aimed at the tourist market. It was about twice the size of your average 7-Eleven convenience store but its shelves offered only perhaps a tenth of the choice.

After spending the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the Motel Las Cuevas and chilling out by the pool, we set off at cocktail hour on the fifteen minute walk to the Plaza Mayor. Unfortunately, an early navigation error (mine, I have to admit) turned this into more like half an hour; walking half lost through the back streets of Trinidad did, however, bring home to us what a safe place Cuba is; we could not imagine doing the same walk in most Caribbean islands - or even in many city areas in Europe - without considerable trepidation. Arriving a bit sweaty at our destination we had drinks at La Cancháchara before strolling across the road just before the rain started for dinner at El Jigüe, a pleasant airy place with an amicable mama-san. We all chose their quite edible “special chicken”, but the food component in Cuba was never a high spot…

After dinner we walked across Plaza Mayor and poked our noses into a few bars before choosing Palenque de los Congos Reales, a large open patio shaded in the day by a rambling, trellised grapevine. The first band was warming up and soon started to play an inimitable style of music with a strong, hypnotic Afro-Cuban rhythm like nothing we had heard elsewhere, and quite outstanding. Later a more traditional band took over and we were still sitting drinking mojitos shortly before midnight - when we took cabs back to the hotel and fell into a rum-induced stupor. Next ➤ ➤

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
Ernest Hemingway

Howard's Trinidad Gallery at PBase

---

Photos

Neil & Nina hit the dance floor
Palanque de los Congos Reales