Cuba - Trinidad

Heather:
Our time in Cuba has carried on getting better and better :0) We spent most of our last week in Trinidad, and haven't wanted to leave as we've made ourselves well and truly at home in another 'casa', headed by Ramonita, a wonderful tiny energetic little old Cuban lady.



Our initial arrival didn't quite go according to plan though as we were whisked off the bus (which had broken down on the way) by a guy pretending to be from the casa we were looking for. He dumped us on the back of a bicycle rickshaw, that didn't cope too well with carrying me, Ben and all our luggage and promptly broke! This led to some comedy antics as we were dragged around town by a second rickshaw, with our driver holding on to the back. The streets are pretty hilly, so every time they got up some momentum there was no way they were going to stop at junctions, regardless of whether or not there were motorbikes headed straight for us!

We realised pretty sharpish that we'd been taken to the wrong place and sought out the right house (on the same street) where we found Ramonita. We then hid behind her, as she let rip at the dodgy guy, despite the fact she was too small to reach his doorbell! Then took us home to her beautiful house, complete with peacock in the garden.

Since then it's been all plain sailing. We've explored Trinidad, which is a pretty, biggish town, with cobbled streets and multicoloured houses. There are lots of great bars, with all manner of rum-based beverages, and fantastic music and dancing. Even I can recognise some Cuban tunes now but still haven't learned to salsa.

Ramonita has kept us well fed, but always gets upset when we're not able to finish the mountains of food she lays on for us every night, but to be honest I could probably do without the microwaved cheese sandwiches she gives us for breakfast!

There's a beach (PLAYA ANCON) near-by, so we hired bikes and cycled there (resulting in sore bums but surprisingly no strops) and spent a couple of days lounging around occasionally venturing out of the shade to work on the tans (I've got a bit of a peely belly) and went snorkelling on a near-by coral reef. The best bit for me was sailing out to it on a tiny catamaran, hanging on to the side as the waves splashed over our heads (not quite so health and safety mad over here!).



I'd say the highlights though have involved hiking in the near-by mountains (TOPES DE COLLANTES and RANCHON EL CUBANO) where we walked through incredible tropical vegetation (again generally with a mangy dog or two at our heels!) to reach waterfalls where we could swim. And as if that wasn't cool enough already... at one we swam right through the waterfall into a cave which was full of bats! Amazing.

Ben:
You can see some more photos here.