Trinidad

I loved Trinidad, it's a wonderful town with some great activities nearby. There are some great churches and museums, one with a tower which gives good views of the area. All the streets are colourful and picturesque, long cobbled roads which lead to the poorer parts of town, and as you walk down all you seem to hear is an old TV blaring out from each house. The houses are terraced and colourful, with gigantic front doors. Many houses are in fact shops of some sort, you have to go up to the window to see that they are selling some sort of fruit juice for a few pesos, or dirt cheap pizzas. I went out walking once on my own, I was in a bad mood at the time and for some reason this made me generous and I bought an ice cream from an old lady in the front room of her house - she wanted 0.70 pesos, and i gave her a $1 note which lit her face up. One dollar is worth 20pesos, so in effect i gave her what she would have earned from selling almost 30 helados, no wonder she was so happy. This cheered me up, and i had gained a fairly decent home made ice cream for about 70pence, so we were both happy.

I climbed the hills at the edge of the town and got a wonderful view of the area, the sea is not too far away (though when you ride a 1980's bike to the coast it feels like 100 miles). Going round the edge of town I was shocked at how often I was asked if I'd like a chica, one man even offered me his teenage daughter for a few dollars, I felt sick at the thought. I sat and watched a bunch of kids playing vollyball in the streets, they were really good, and it must have been an important game judging by the scale of the arguments taking place. Round the corner a man sat on the wall playing the trumpet to himself, and he was pretty good. I passed another gang of lads, they saw that i wasn't cuban and took a liking to my combat style shorts. One guy wanted to swap them with his old sporty ones, this clearly wasn't a fair deal so i gave him the rest of my drink and he seemed happy enough.

The next day we went on a jeep safari which we arranged at the local tourist office, which i would highly recommend. We were cramped in the back of a jeep, (until i decided to get in the boot) as we edged up the mountains for some even better views of the area. We visited some symbolic giant sundial, which unfortunately was slightly wrong, before getting out of the jeep and starting a hike through the woods. A tour guide took us to a massive waterfall, which we were able to go underneath. The water was f***ing freezing! But it was so refreshing, we also climbed up some slippery rock to a higher position for some excelent photo opportunities. If you put your head under the most forcefull part of the waterfall it nearly knocks you out, but everyone had a go. Dan stayed at the side because of his fear of water (!) which meant he took some wicked photos, so cheers dan. Unfortuately, blake lost his wallet around this time, we left all our stuff with the guide at the edge of the waterfall, but he may have dropped it anywhere. From here, me, blake and lucy, along with some other brits went on a river walk towards the climax of the trip. This involved swimming, swinging, climbing and falling down gaps in the rocks, as well as random diving into the river (Blake did a tremendous bellyflop!), before reaching the final lake. When we got there we had to jump off a rock, grab the overhead branch, climb up and dive in from quite a height. I managed it, but then again i always have been a bit of a monkey boy... Unfortuately blake couldn't hold his weight, and lucy was too much of a midget to reach the branch. This was followed by lunch at a local house/restaurant, with an audience of cats, dogs and chickens. Dan showed us another of his phobias - kittens, as he couldn't cope with his meal if a cute pussy cat was scratching on his chair. Chicken was the main part of the meal, but we couldn't eat it all, so threw our leftovers to the cats and dogs, but they were too preoccupied with terrorising dan, which meant the scraps were in fact gobbled up by the chickens ("that's your brother you're eating...")

It also happened to be Caroline's birthday, her mum had given her some money for a meal, and despite some slightly dodgy service (it's usual for meals to come out separately, but this took the piss), we had a good night, the Mojito's went down easily.

The following day we decided to make use of our land lady's resources. We were staying in a fantastic casa, with yet more fabulous food, and eating it out on the terrace. The guidebooks recommeded hiring bicycles and riding down to the beach, unfortunately only me and blake were up for it... but we hired some bikes from our landlady. Well, you could call them bikes. The journey was 10km or so, along unmade roads, fields and up and down pretty steep hills. Blake, despite looking quite fat and slow, does a lot of cycling, and i was knackered. It didn't help that my saddle kept falling off, and that when i got it back on it really hurt my arse. And my back ached. The beach itself at Playa Ancon was OK, not as nice as Varadero, but we had a good day. The ride home was excrutiating, but i don't like to moan so suffered in silence.

We then met up with Eamon again, because lucy was there for a week longer they arranged to spend it together. In fact it was me who made lucy phone eamon when we were back in the UK so she could arrange to meet eamon in havana, otherwise she would have been alone for a week, i never did hear a thankyou... We went to a club that night, which was situated in an underground cave - very strange. It was $7 entry with free drinks all night, there weren't many people in there but the mojito's, san francisco's, pina colada's etc made for a good night. A strange mix of music (eg mambo no. 5), with some eerie lighting meant for a truly original night out. My dancing made the others laugh, but I'm used to it by now.

This proved to be our last night with lucy and eamon, we left them and headed back to havana for a couple of days, before departing back to a dreary england. One thing on the last day summed up Cuba for me - we got a lift to the airport with a doctor - Cuba is regarded as having one of the best healthcare services in the world, but a fully trained doctor needed the extra cash to supplement her income of just $20 a month. We also drove past the treatment centre where maradona was treated, and filmed for TV, because of his drugs problems.

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