16/04/2019 – Trinidad, Cuba

We got up for a 09:00 breakfast at the casa – fried eggs, bacon, bread, butter, fruit, juice, coffee, and filled our boots! Best breakfast so far I reckon. We grabbed our map, camera, wallet etc and then headed out into another beautiful scorcher of a day, clear blue skies ahead! We wandered around Trinidad for a while to get our bearings, through the centro historica area, past some street bands, through some souvenir markets, until we came across the bell tower. We paid the 1 CUC fee each and headed right to the top of the tower to get a great 360* view of Trinidad. Beyond the rooftops we could see mountains one way and sea the other, it was really beautiful, plus really cool as it was sheltered from the sun and there was a nice through breeze up there! The stairs were pretty makeshift and the barriers at the top were only up to our knees so it did feel pretty sketchy. We got chatting to a couple from Holland who told us to dig a 25 Cent coin from our pocket, and sure enough, on the coin was the bell tower we were in!

The view of the mountains from the tower.

The view of the sea ( and Jen ) from the tower.

Downstairs there was a bit of information about the revolution and Castro so we checked that out too. There is a lot of history and politics to digest!

After this, it was lunchtime. We passed a street vendor selling little pizzas, so we grabbed a couple and a bottle of water. We pootled around town until we got to the WiFi park. We logged in and looked up some lonely planet stuff for Trinidad then went to the ATM to get our next lot of monzo cash out. The problem was that it was my turn to get out the monzo money and I couldn’t remember my pin number. After a couple of tries I decided to call quits before the ATM swallowed my card, so we had to head back to the wifi park, log in and I had to do a few admin bits on monzo so they could show me my pin! The wifi is slow here and so it took a little while (selfie video, pictures of my driving license etc etc!) before that was sorted. Confession – I didn’t know until quite recently that you can change the pin number the bank send with the card to you, plus I had all of them on a note in my phone but accidentally deleted it a little while ago! Thankfully Josh took this little episode in good humour as always! Then we went back to the casa. We planned to just drop in to get our passports so we could go and buy our bus tickets for in a few days time, but it was so nice to be out of the sun, we sat down and both ended up falling asleep! When we woke up a good hour later we grabbed our documents and paraded up to the bus ticket office. Obviously, as is the only way here, we were hustled the whole time. It goes a bit like this (this is all just one persons hustle):

taxi?

taxi? good price!

taxi, [to josh] take your girl to the playa!?

O.k….banana banana banana?

…

taxi?

We got to the bus station and it was closed (we were hustled by about 5 taxi drivers immediately who couldn’t be happier we had missed the ticket office, but thankfully it was not urgent for us!) So we then tried to find some tourist information places – we plan on going on a trek into the nearby mountains to see some waterfalls this week. We found one and got some information but by the time we got to the second place it was closed. On our way back we passed someone playing with a husky puppy on their doorstep, and it had piercing blue eyes. The owner was very proud and invited Josh in to take some photos of the dogs!

Blue eyed husky.

We headed back to the casa and had some cereal in the garden. There is a big winding tree that forms a canopy in part of the garden and we spotted a gorgeous, tiny, petrol coloured hummingbird!

After this we went to the fruit and veg market and grabbed some onions and tomatoes, and then to the nearby shop for tomato puree and spaghetti. We bought a cold pop and sat in the square then headed home and made ourselves some dinner. Leo chatted away with us whilst we did so and we spent the rest of the evening with him. At one point Josh asked how much a car like this costs here (then showed Leo a photo of a fancy car he had taken in Havana) and Leo recognised the car and said that exact car belonged to his friend that lives on the same street! It is a small world!

Leo's friends car!