18/04/2019 – Trinidad mountains, Cuba

I was woken by Josh at 0200 needing a loperamide. He tucked himself up on the single bed next to me in his little silk liner, just in case, but thankfully it was only a one hit wander and he snored his way through the rest of the night!

We got up and had an 07:30 breakfast, as we had to meet at 08:30 in town for our excursion. In traditional Sudell style we were a little late, but we made it! With a mixture of German, Danish, French and Kiwis, we hopped into an open top 20 seater old soviet Jeep truck to go up into the mountains. It was about an hour long journey along a steep, winding, narrow road up into the Escembray mountains, a national park. Our first stop was a coffee house, we had a cappuccino made from the coffee beans from this park. They put cinnamon on top of cappuccinos in Cuba, which is a great touch! Then we went up to a small farmers market on the side of the road and bought a peanut & honey bar to share for the trek. Next we pulled up and all got out of the Jeep ready for a hike down through the forest.

1950's Soviet Truck, fuel consuption - 1.5L per KM!

The guide explained some local flora and fauna to us (Joshs new fave phrase) on the 3.5km trek down until we got to some waterfalls.

Local flora and fauna.

We hopped in the fresh water and had a swim for half an hour, which was very refreshing. Then we walked back up, through the beautiful green forest to get back in the Jeep. We saw some hummingbirds amongst other birds and some black lizards. We drove down part of the mountain and got some lunch in a nearby restaurant (rice and pork) then drove a little further down to a viewpoint where you get panoramic views of Trinidad, the mountains, the Caribbean sea. After this we came back down the mountains back into the central park of Trinidad. We used the Wifi park to message our hosts that we are going to tomorrow and then grabbed some cold drinks and snacks on the way home. We sat in the garden with granny and chilled in the shade before going inside to shower and start packing our things.

We had dinner in the garden cooked by our host Leo, and his friend (previously a chef!) He said they had been preparing the food since about 14:00! For starters we had some breadstick biscuit things and a carrot, tomato and cabbage salad. Then we were served a creamy fishy soup, which had so much flavour. The main course was lobster and breaded fillet of fish with a side of rice and fried potatoes. Leo explained they had gone to buy the freshly caught fish and lobster from a local beach today – apparently the lobster is caught by hand by a snorkeller! He showed us a video of how it had been caught on his computer. They watched excitedly as we had our first bite – they both seemed so excited to share this special dinner, Leo had a face of glee as Josh and I savoured every bite. It felt to us like the meal had genuinely been made for our enjoyment and not just for money, which is what it can sometimes feel like in a casa. When I said my dad loves lobster and I’m going to send him here for this dinner, Leo said, if your dad comes here, he gets all of this dinner for free! We sat in the garden for the rest of the evening, and Josh got some pictures of us with the whole family (the boys enjoyed playing with Joshs camera!). Josh bluetoothed the photos over to Leos phone (they don’t really know what Bluetooth is here!)

We got as much of our stuff together as we could and went to sleep.