The Unholy Trinity of Trinidad, Touts, Taxis and Tourists

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Day 457 Thursday 10^th January

Today Mario and Mercedes from our Casa put on another great spread for breakfast before we started into our packing. Our bus wasn’t till 11am so we had plenty of time to get ourselves sorted and pay our bill. At 10.30 Mario told us his son couldn’t drive us down to where the bus was leaving because he was at the dentist but he would get his neighbour to drive us. His neighbour rolled up driving a battered 1952 Chev that he had to hot wire start it with two wires hanging out from the dash. Mario came down town with us and he laughed all the way about the state his neighbour’s car was in and all the things he had to do to keep it going.

We got dropped off in front of the town’s only Hotel, where the bus stops and we said our goodbye to our great host. His neighbour refused to take money for the lift and seemed happy to be helping two gringos….we love Cuba. Mario had warned us that the bus was due around 11, but it is Cuba so it could be late, so it came as no surprise when it turned up at 11.30. Lucky for us we got the last two seats on the bus and for half the trip were separated but when it stopped at Cienfuegos, half the passengers got off and we could sit together. We arrived at our destination of Trinidad at 3pm and were dumped at the town’s small bus terminal. At the large entrance a wire had been put across to stop all the touts crossing, and approaching them felt like we were walking into a lion’s den. On all previous occasions someone from the casa was there to greet us so we walked over trying to figure out who was here for us when a guy held up a sign saying “Michele and Scoft”. Got Michele’s name right and mine was close so this must be our man. He told us his name and said “Carlos” couldn’t make it because he had to meet another bus or something like that and as the Casa we wanted to stay at was “Carlos Colonial Casa” we figured that everything was okay.

Our ride to our casa was on a cycle rickshaw, which was ridiculous with all the backpacks we had, but the guy managed to tie everything on and we sat on the seats and then he had to pedal his little heart out. Would normally feel sorry for someone having to cycle our weight around but it was mostly downhill and the guy was a bit too slick for our liking and we felt something wasn’t quite right. Lucky for him it was only a 15 minute ride and we were dropped at Hostal Onidia. We sort of guessed that perhaps “Carlos” was booked out and he had farmed us onto a friend which is common and we were told to expect it but it wasn’t exactly clear to us and we sort of felt uneasy about it. Anyway before we knew it we were greeted by Onidia the over the top owner of the hostal. We got hugs and kisses out on the footpath before we even entered and she spoke at a hundred miles an hour without giving us much chance to work out how we actually ended up here. She was really lovely but perhaps a bit full on and before we knew it she was trying to get us to have breakfast and dinner there as well as sell us her mother’s handicrafts. I think because we felt we were in the wrong place it sort of added to our unease but the room was great, and had air-con, fan, tellie and a large clean bathroom with hot water. Despite the uncertainty we took the room because the price was right (25 CUC’s) and the breakfast 5 CUC’s each extra but held off on the dinner and handicrafts.

Managed to somehow escape out of the place and hit the streets to see where we are and what was around. We are about 8 blocks from the historical centre of Trinidad so that was exactly which way we headed. Trinidad was founded in 1514 by Conquistador Diego Velazquez de Cuellar, making the town 499 years old. In 1518 The Conquistador Hernan Cortes passed through here on his way to conquering Mexico, which sort of gives you an idea how old the place is. Over the centuries the town’s fortune waxed and waned till around the mid 1800's time seems to have just frozen, leaving the town in readiness for the tourist invasion today. The same could be said for most of the Cuba we have seen already, and Trinidad although pretty, we don’t necessarily believe is any better than Cienfuegos although it sees a larger number of tourists. Perhaps the true beauty of the town lies in it sitting beneath a picturesque hill and being close to the sea. The buildings are nice but still think Cienfuegos has more to offer. This place is really a large tourist trap with lots of souvenir shops, markets, overpriced restaurants and of course thousands of touts.

We walked around for a while till we spotted a proper non-Government internet café and so went in and spent an hour on a LADA slow computer but we managed to finally post a blog….yippee. For the hour it cost us a stupid 9 CUC’s so when we get home we will need everyone to chip and pay for the rights to read that entry….yea your right no one would pay to read our dribble. Went to the nearest bar to recover from dealing with the slow computer and ended up at a place that was in the process of filming a promotional video for itself. For those out there that don’t know Michele I can let you know that she doesn’t exactly like being filmed (or even photographed for that matter) so she didn’t take too kindly to having a guy fluffing around her with a video camera. We had to clear out of there before she killed someone and walked around for another hour with the tourist packs before settling at a restaurant for dinner. The place wasn’t badly priced but the food wasn’t going to win any prizes unless there is a prize for imaginative definition of the word “Parmesan”. The good old Lonely Planet sort of reckoned that we may be better off eating back at the Casa’s so as much as we didn’t feel right about it we thought we may have to do that tomorrow.



Day 458 Friday 11^th January

The breakfast at our Casa was huge, with juice, coffee, fresh cut fruit, bread, butter, jam and omelette. Fairly good value and of course the owner was straight onto us for us to eat here tonight for dinner and after a bit of hesitation we decided to. Hadn’t really spotted much of value in town yesterday and figure it is probably as good as anywhere.

After brekkie we walked downtown and spent the whole day just strolling through the markets, souvenir shops and taking photos. At one point we were passing an interesting looking building and it appeared to be a museum with an entry fee of 1 CUC each so we went in not knowing what it was. It ended up being another patriotic museum about Fidel and Co taking Cuba, which we have seen a few times now so it didn’t hold our attention too long. The only thing of real interest to me was a large mangled piece of a US U2 spy plane shot down over Cuba, but other than that we have seen it all before.

There isn’t a lot of substance to Trinidad and the hassle from restaurant touts and cigar sellers can be a huge distraction, and at times you feel as if the entire population is out to sell you something. Shelley did end up giving an old guy some money for his photo sitting on a donkey, which is something we rarely do, and if my memory serves me right only one other time on this trip. I think we did it because he looked so good and wasn’t pushy but just had a sign on his donkey.

We ended up seeing the town four times before heading home around 3pm for a siesta. Had our dinner at the Casa at 7pm and it was bigger than huge, with endless platters of food. We got fruit salad, vegetable salad, a huge bowl of vegetable soup, a plate of chips, a mountain of rice and then Shelley got lobster and I had a beef dish all for 20 CUC’s….we hope. There was so much food we had no hope of finishing it and it was all good stuff so we may go it again tomorrow.

After our feed we had a chat with a lovely Slovenian couple staying here as well…Slovenians are just the nicest people. They are heading home tomorrow but were able to give us some good tips about getting out to the beach tomorrow. We didn’t want to turn in so early so we opted to go for a walk around town and see what was happening and discovered not much was happening. The streets were near deserted except for packs of roaming restaurant touts who just hounded us till we had enough and headed home. This town is supposed to be famous for the singing and dancing but what we saw around seemed a bit put-on. The restaurants and bars were either expensive types packed with package tourists or devoid of anyone other than one tourist and a band serenading them. We perhaps should have only had one day here, but you don’t know these things till you arrive.



Day 459 Saturday 12^th January

Well the day started well with yet another great breakfast but as we started to get ready to head down to the beach my (Scott) world started to fall apart. Hadn’t been feeling the best over the last few days just slightly off colour but it got a whole lot worse very quickly. Got a raging temperature, diarrhoea and almost passed out all within about thirty minutes, so that killed our day at the beach. It felt like a dose of food poisoning but I had been a bit crook for a few days so I am sure it was probably some nasty bug I had picked up along the way and decided to hit me hard today.

Spent the rest of the day running from the bed to the bathroom, laying on the tiles to cool down and alternatively under the blanket to warm up. Shelley spent the day reading and fending off Onidia who wanted to check on me every ten minutes. She is a really lovely person and really, really caring but a little bit goes a long way and her offers of food all the time when I knew I had to starve myself wasn’t much help. Shelley ended up having dinner by herself and said the fish was fantastic but there was no way I was going to go anywhere near food till tomorrow. We missed out on going to the beach today but at least I wasn’t on a long haul bus. Because I had been so sick today I thought we may have to have another day in Trinidad but by late at night I started to feel better so tomorrow we are heading off to conclude our Che pilgrimage at Santa Clara.





Day 460 Sunday 13^th January

Woke up feeling heaps better but still only had a few morsels for breakfast as my stomach was still doing loops and I knew there was little fear of me fading away. Onidia of course was in overdrive fluffing around and trying to get us to stay an extra day, because it was the 499 anniversary of the foundation of the city and today was going to be a big party day. Staying here for the party sounded interesting but I was fairly keen to get moving and told Shelley if I should pass out to just tie the back pack on me and drag me to the door and I will try and tumble out to the taxi.

Our bus wasn’t till 3pm so we thought we would walk the town a bit and see if we could post another blog at the internet café while we could. Before heading off we paid our bill with Onidia and despite our nervousness the bill came to exactly what we thought it would.

Out on the streets of Trinidad it was hard to believe there was any celebrations at all, and just looked like any day on any Cuban street….maybe things will take off tonight. Got to the internet café, which is in the back of an overpriced café manned by some of the surliest Cubans we have ever met. Cubans are some of the nicest people we have met on this trip, with the exception of Government run restaurants where you wouldn’t get a smile out of them even if you handed them a bag of CUC’s. The girl running the computers was not only surly, but rude and abrasive and the guy running the café we discovered was charging tourists whatever he liked. Whilst there we saw two different groups of Gringos get charged different prices on water; if you ever find yourself in Trinidad DO NOT GO TO THE Cafeteria las Begonias.

For us unfortunately, desperate to do some banking (would never ordinarily do it in an internet café, but have no choice in Cuba), and post another blog, we were stuck in this horrible hole for an hour. With this task complete we were able to wander the streets of Trinidad trying desperately to see an inkling of a celebratory party but nada. Got back to Onidia where we were gushed upon for 15 minutes whilst waiting for our taxi. She is a lovely lady and she is trying hard (and trying), but we found it a bit hard to bear so we were very grateful when our taxi did finally arrive to whisk us away to the bus terminal. Had to wait an hour before we could board our bus and due to a ticketing problem we were delayed a further twenty minutes.

Finally underway we had to once again return to Cienfuegos before heading inland to the town of Santa Clara. We arrived around 6pm and the tussle to get our bags was worse than usual and was made worse by a pushy security guard and another reversing bus. Made it to the outside where a guy was holding up a sign that read “Michelle William”…I guess that’s us, and sure enough it was. Got a lift to the Hostal by a nice guy driving a complete wreck of a car whilst puffing on a cigar that got us to what we thought was going to be our home for two nights. The Pergola Authentica Hostal looked fabulous and it had the feel of a five star hotel when we walked in so you can imagine our disappointment when we discovered that they could only put us up for one night or we could move somewhere else for the other night. We didn’t really want to be packing again in the morning so we opted to move onto another place for tonight and so he took us down to another Casa Particular. Along the way he wanted to know where we were from and when we told him, his eyes lit up and he said “ahhhh land of Skippy”. Apparently Skippy was a big hit in Cuba, so I guess Cuba gave the world Che Guevara and in return we gave Cuba, Skippy the bush kangaroo; you can argue amongst yourself on who got the better deal.

We ended up two blocks away at Maria Hostel, run of course by Maria who is yet again another lovely Cuban. After the dramas of the last casa particular we were a bit concerned at what we would get but this one is an absolute gem. Maria was so inviting and helpful it was an absolute pleasure to be staying in her home. To add to the lovely homeliness of the place we had Neno a cute Dashound dog following us around wanting attention (note Maria checks if you are OK with dogs).

After booking in, dropping off our bags and chatting to Maria for a bit, we headed out to find somewhere to eat. Maria had volunteered to prepare something for us but as it was late we really didn’t want to put her out so we went out to see what we could find. Being Sunday not much was open and/or it had huge queues out the door. Discovered the town is full of bars though in particular selling daiquiris, which may fuel the Miss Transvestite festival they have here in March….Cuba is full of heaps of surprises. Settled for a pizza at a Government run restaurant where we got a pizza and beers (less the smiles) for 15 CUC’s. The pizza was cheap but not too big so on the way home we dropped in at an ice cream parlour and after wandering around looking into empty freezes we asked the girl “chocolate Helado?” (ice cream). She looked at us unsmiling and said “no” and pointed us down the road. An ice cream shop without ice cream…I think Monty Python did a sketch similar to this but with a cheese shop. Lucky for us the bar down the road sold ice cream, I guess we should have figured that one out.

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Photos

Trinidad
When the boys come to town

Trinidad
When the girls come to town

Trinidad
One of the Plazas

Trinidad
Hi Good Looking

Trinidad
Side street - it took plenty of patience to get these photos without people

Trinidad
Looking down on the town

Trinidad
Look under my hood

Trinidad
Quiet side street

Trinidad
Colourful old building

Trinidad
Yes another side street

Trinidad
Cathedral

Trinidad
Old church tower

Trinidad
The red roofs of Trinidad

Trinidad
Wedding party at the Catedral

Trinidad
Latest Cuban speedboat accessory

Trinidad
Remains of US spy plane