Trinidad Bell Tower
500 years ago during the Spanish colonization of Cuba, flush with the wealth of the sugar trade, the town of Trinidad was formed along the southern Caribbean coast. The anniversary party was just getting ramped up as we rolled into town, a celebration of food and music that would last an entire week. A week long food and music festival in Cuba? Yes please
One of the advertising slogans for Cuba tourism effectively translates as “Where the past and present live together.” This is definitely true of Trinidad, a quaint little town laid out around a main church and public square in Spanish colonial fashion. The narrow dirt and cobblestone streets are shared by a few cars, many bicycles, and horse drawn carriages. 1959 is part of the present, right?
The town center is very well preserved, as tourism is Trinidad’s main source of income. Waking across town takes just a few moments, and you can see the walls and roadways steadily return closer to nature as you approach the adjacent trees and farmland that spread out towards the surrounding mountains
Trinidad Church
In many ways, Trinidad is the opposite of Havana. Everybody from the panhandlers to the bici-taxi drivers to the restaurant staff to random people in the street was substantially more open and friendly. The town itself had seen regular maintenance, and garbage collectors weren’t holding the city hostage. Even the exhaust level was way down, partially due to greater reliance on 4-legged transport and the presence of new Chinese made tour buses.
Local Transport
A Typical Trinidad Street
Cruising Up the Main Drag
We checked into our Casa Particular and were quickly enveloped in warmth, as if we had arrived at Grandma’s house after a long journey. Our guest room was in a 200+ year old home that the 65-year-old owner’s father had purchased when he was starting a family, and had been added to the structure in recent years. 3 generations lived within, crossing paths multiple times a day and then sitting down together for a family dinner.
A Typical Room in Trinidad
We came home one night to find the youngest family member bouncing off the walls as only a 5 year old birthday boy on a sugar high can do, singing excitedly at the top of his lungs. He was elated about the birthday present that he had received, and wanted to show and tell us all about it. What caused so much excitement? 2 Kinder Eggs (Ironically, a product illegal in the US.) It was a good reminder to find gratitude in even the small things. Later we all sat down together and had birthday cake
The streets of the 500 Year Anniversary party were packed with people and stray dogs, both vying for the attention of the numerous food vendors. Pork sandwiches and ice cream cones seemed to be the most popular items, followed closely by the beer vendors… you could just walk up to the window of somebody’s home and order a draft beer, and then walk around town with your open container
Pork Sandwiches
The days were fairly quiet, with the music getting started around midnight and going until 6 am. We gathered in one of the town squares one fine evening with a few hundred other people, ready to hear some live music. Without announcement, a DJ came on stage and started his show. I’m not sure why, but he seemed to have only 3 or 4 tracks to play, and his personal favorite was this one by (non-Cuban) Marc Anthony. The hard core dancers seemed to enjoy it, but the crowd thinned quickly after the 3rd or 4th repetition. The music part of the festival turned out to be a dud, but we did find some talented guitar players in a few restaurants
With an abundance of sugar cane industry history in the nearby valleys, we took a train tour to the Valle de los Ingenios, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The train tracks wound through the hills past small farmsteads and old plantations. One of the two train cars was completed dedicated to a wet bar, where you could order any drink you wanted as long as it had rum, which is always a good thing to do at 9 am
According to the tour literature, the train was to be pulled by an old steam engine from the era, but it was broken and appeared to have been for quite some time. The small diesel replacement did a great job, pulling us easily through the beautiful valley. We stopped briefly at an old sugar plantation for lunch and at a small town to take in the sweeping views from an old bell tower.
Choo Choo
Full Speed Ahead!
Manaca-Iznage Bell Tower
Valle de los Ingenios
On the return trip to Trinidad, as we were watching some farmers spot burn their fields to prepare for a new planting, the train jolted to a stop with a horrible screech. Fortunately nobody was hurt and only a few drinks were spilled, which is more than could be said for the cow that had wandered too close to the tracks.
Free Range Cow
Back in town, on our way to one of our favorite restaurants we passed a local market with a few of the local delicacies.
Lunch?
Local Supermarket
There was a respectable amount of good food in town, with great slow cooked pork and seafood. Prices were substantially lower than in Havana, with everything costing about $10. Even lobster cost only 10 – 15 CUC ($10 – $15.) To get an idea of how plentiful lobster was, even the family cat snacked on lobster on a regular basis
Seafood Paella
Cancháncharra, a delicious mix of rum, water, lemon juice, and honey
The Most Popular Restaurant in Town
Street Pizza
During our remaining days in Trinidad, we took the local bus out to Playa Ancon where we lounged in the sun and read. Two of the books we read were The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
, Che Guevara’s biography of his trip through Latin America, and Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
by John Lee Anderson, the biography by the author that helped uncover the hidden location of Che’s body in Bolivia. The biography deserves the accolades it has received, and the combination of the two helped form a more clear image of the political and economic environment around us. It even inspired us to take a day trip to Santa Clara to view the Che Guevera Memorial (although we both concluded that he was a bit of a douche)
Dive Boat
Playa Ancon
Church Ruins
Sunset in Trinidad
While Trinidad’s 500th Anniversary won’t be coming around again anytime soon, we found the spirit of the place was more in the people and natural environment than in the festivities. If you find yourself in Cuba, Trinidad is worth a visit
$:
Room in a Casa Particular: 25 CUC ($25)
Breakfast in la casa: 4 CUC ($4)
Roundtrip bus to Playa Ancon: 2 CUC ($2)
Beach chair rental: 2 CUC ($2)
Train tour to Valle de los Ingenios: 10 CUC ($10)
Fee to climb the Manaca-Iznage Bell Tower: 1 CUC ($1)
Thanks for the awesome post and photos. I am vicariously enjoying your trip, it’s better than any TV show!
My two favorite photos are “A Typical Trinidad Street” and “Sunset in Trinidad”. I feel they capture the essence of the town. Those streets can be seen elsewhere in the Caribbean and I think they share the same essence. I can’t help but feel a great wave of nostalgia when I look at your photos. I used to run around streets like that when I was a kid (which is why I am very aware of how incredibly wealthy North American nations are. But wealth will not buy a happiness that can be found in those little towns).
The Manaca-Iznage Bell Tower has a Lord of the Rings look to it, very cool!
Thanks again for such awesome photos.
Thanks Spoonman! Where did you grow up?
The streets of Trinidad reminded me a bit of when we were sailing around the BVIs
For the sake of anonimity, I can’t say!
I’m Batman! =).
Beautiful. Would be nice though if explain why most Cubans themselves will never see Trinidad. Why no satellite dishes? And why the pollution is low?
Castro took away his people’s freedom, but he was smart enough not to destroy it’s past like the Islamist’s in Afghanistan.
Hi Mike
Glad to see you posting here! Thanks for checking us out
There is a whole separate hotel and bus network in Cuba, so Cubans will vacation in Trinidad on occasion. Prices and quality are on a different scale
There is no pollution obviously because there is no industry, unless you count horse manure as pollution. There were definitely an abundance of flies in a few places
Horse manure = major methane producer. Big time greenhouse gas… :)
American imperialism = no toy filled chocolate eggs. The downside of living in one of the top 20 greatest countries on earth!
I’m glad to see the rest of Cuba isn’t as dismal as Havana. Trinidad seems like a cool place to chill out and explore.
Were you able to eat in regular restaurants that the locals dined at? Do you pay with CUC or the regular peso? And if it was $10 CUC for a meal, does that mean locals paid roughly $0.50 USD equivalent in regular cuban pesos?
And was it theoretically possible to arbitrage the costs a bit by trading USD for regular pesos or is that a capital offense in Cuba?
Hey Justin
10 CUC for a meal means locals would pay 1/3 of their average monthly income to eat it. Every Cuban we asked about restaurants said they eat every meal at home, because it is cost prohibitive to eat anywhere else, with the exception of the occasional street pizza which cost 10 – 15 pesos. The Peso is roughly 25:1 against the CUC.
We did convert some CUC to pesos and ate some pizza, but generally speaking we simply didn’t find any “local” restaurants with the exception of one in Santa Clara, which I’ll write a bit into an upcoming post
All of the street festival food was priced in pesos and was cheap. We met a guy from San Francisco that was living completely off the chicken and rice dishes from there for ~$1 a meal. I got an ice cream cone for 5 pesos (~$0.20) which tasted like artificial strawberry flavoring, so I didn’t finish it
That must be a strange experience for locals to see us pale skinned imperialists from up north spending the equivalent of 10 days salary on a simple meal. I think I get the 2 currency system now. Just hard to wrap your head around. I was trying to put it in perspective.
Maybe a maid in Thailand that earns $300 USD/month thinks it crazy if you go out and blow $100 on dinner and drinks all night for you and your closest friends.
Man, low cost awesome food is my favorite part of traveling to developing nations. Low labor costs = cheap restaurant food.
Hey, I have a neat little article coming out probably tomorrow or Wednesday on geographic arbitrage and its role in selecting the optimal low cost travel destination. Probably old hat to you but a neat spin on it.
The only difference from the Thailand maid analogy is that the maid would likely eat in local (cheap) restaurants on occasion, which you could choose to dine in as well. In Cuba, (with some exceptions) there is no local restaurant, so your options are to go out and blow $100 on dinner and drinks for every meal or eat pizza
That’s true. Market rate restaurants don’t exist for locals because?? No demand due to no money among the locals? Prohibition by the state? Lack of supply chains for food to keep them running consistently?
Total guess on this one:
No expendable income means demand is low, combined with the state frowning upon individual entrepreneurialism.
But if you were going to open a restaurant and go through the licensing process, what better to open: a restaurant that sells low price food to locals or one that has high revenue from the tourists?
Ah, yes. Market distortion at it’s finest. Statist market controls misdirect capital flows to the wrong places and leave some markets neglected. Pobrecitos!
sounds like you had a much better time in Trinidad–so glad to hear it.
And our favorite place is still coming up! :)
It looks like a lovely town!
Thanks for this amazing insight into Cuba, it looks like such an incredible, colourful place!
I’ve read both of those books and totally concur about Che.
Wow, and people in the U.S. think they have it hard. They don’t even have the “opportunity” to improve their conditions. They are born poor and will die poor. Socialism.. Communism, no thanks