Trinidad 1

At breakfast I got an ear bashing by Miriam about how the tourist industry in Cuba was corrupting values. I assume she meant that she and her siblings were reluctant participants in it. She believed that some kind of capitalism was needed but values must remain socialist. Privately I was of the view that the problem with communism is that it inevitably ends up as a kind of religion and loyalties to any kind of religion, godless or not, will always be weaker than human emotions. It's better that people help the less fortunate from their own hearts than for it to be dictated by any religion. However the state should set a safety net.


Before I left I gave my read copy of The Odyssey to the family. Good, one less object to carry. They gave an introduction to a woman in Trinidad renting a room, Berta. This was the first of a chain of links of introductions I would follow for a while.


I needn't have worried about buying the ticket early in the morning; as it turned out there were quite a few empty seats in the bus for the 2 hour run (about 100km) to Trinidad, also on the south coast of Cuba. I was skipping Santa Clara, which has a monument to Che Guevara and not much else, it seemed. The other passengers were mostly backpackers and couples. I dozed off in the heat and missed the coastal scenery, but what little I saw wasn't spectacular. Cubans sing superlatives about their scenery, but it's no better than what you'd expect of a Caribbean island. Then again they have little chance to view other places for comparison.


On arrival I dodged the touts waiting for the bus and walked through cobblestone streets to reach Berta's house. On the way I stopped at a roadside stall to have a drink of guarapo (sugar cane juice) to cool off. The "glass" was cut from the bottom of a bottle. Trinidad is also a World Heritage listed city. Its position on the south coast meant that unlike the north coast, it didn't receive cooling onshore winds from the north and was noticeably warmer. So I didn't feel hungry even though I had only some müsli for lunch. The room was small, without any air-conditioning, only a fan, which made it stifling. But dinner and breakfast were cheaper, leaving me with a larger margin.

After dinner I walked to the old city nearby. Lighting was poor and this dim shot of Plaza Mayor buildings was the only photo I took that day. I preferred the Parque Cespedes where I had a 10 peso (40c) beer and conversed a bit with the pub owner.


Berta taught geography in the evenings and her husband was a bus driver, which meant that they were still up when I got back late in the evening. I chatted with them until midnight in their room upstairs and gave them some small gifts, including a pair of fold-up reading glasses. She was quite enchanted with it. I gave their son, a university student, a scientific calculator that I had bought in a variety store, and donated a bunch of ball point pens and a pocket chess set to the kids at the school they worked at.


One thing I had noticed was that Cubans tack on mi amor (my love) or mi vida (my life) to conversational sentences. Really no different from people tacking on love in English conversations. Just a way of bonding between the conversationalists.


I arranged the doors for maximum air flow and with that the temperature was bearable during the night. Unfortunately there was a cicada chirping away outside. Time to get out the ear plugs.