Category: Trinidad

With today being a free day, most of the group were off either hiking to a nearby waterfall, cruising around on a local catamaran or on a scheduled local tour. Myself and Sarah, a rock licker (Geologist) from Perth, Western Australia decided to meander around town on our own.

We visited the local crafts markets, joined a free city walking tour for a bit, before breaking away for an awesome lunch at the Cubita Santander. A couple of Cristals and a chinwag at the Casa De La Cerveza (House of Beer) and we were back on the streets exploring Trinidad.

We happened upon a couple of galleries which had some stunning artwork on display. I don’t do the whole ‘trinket & t-shirt’ souvenir bullshit thing, but I will purchase artwork, which was the case at Galeria R-Evolucion which features the work of the owner Rafael Alvarez Alonso.

After a second visit to Casa De La Cerveza, Sarah and I returned to the Main Casa to meet up with the rest of the group for our included Salsa dance class. As there were ½ a dozen of us who were not interested in the Salsa lesson, I arranged for Ronaldo to come back instruct us on the art of making a Mojito, a Daiquiri and a Canchánchara as we obviously failed yesterday’s class.

Dinner was held just a little out of town at a place called Restaurante La Marinera whose specialty is seafood and while most of the group decided to continue on at a local nightclub – Discoteca Ayala (The Cave), that is situated in a huge subterranean cave, I on the other hand decided it was best to check my eyelids for holes.

All of us were up and out of the Hotel Colon before 9AM as we had scheduled a bicycle taxi tour of old town Camagüey.

I have to say outside of staying in The Underground Hotel in Coober Pedy, this is the first hotel I’ve stayed slept in that’s had no windows at all – kind a weird ….. or did they re-purpose a broom closet, because the room sure felt that way.

In just on a hour, we got to see a few of the city’s historical sites like Plaza de los Trabajadores, Teatro Principal de Camagüey and the gallery and street sculptures of renowned local artist Martha Jiminez.

It was then a 3 hour bus ride into Sancti Spiritus where lunch was meant to be a Serrano Ham sandwich at the Taberna Yayabo, which turned into a 2 hour ordeal in which you got two one inch thick slices of dried bread with bacon like pork meat and sweaty cheese for $8 USD that could be best described as a shit sandwich without the bread.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with the 1½ hour drive into Cuba’s third oldest city – Trinidad.

After freshening up, we all met back at the main casa – Casa Anay y Jesus for Ronaldo to both instruct and allow us hands-on tutoring in the making of a Mojito, a Daiquiri and a Canchánchara, which I might add, was a hell of a lot of fun.

Dinner was a group affair at the main casa before quite a few of us headed out to a local square which was pumping with locals bands at Casa de la Música.