Sun, Sea and Salsa in Cuba's Trinidad

I'm sorry but you'll have to excuse a little latina cheese in this blog post but I think I found my spiritual homeland in Cuba's Trinidad. For seasoned Cuba travellers, Trinidad is said to have become too touristy but for little lone me looking for a beautiful spot to unwind by day and wind up again at night, it was the perfect 6 day hang out... once i got there, I couldn't bring myself to leave. 

With thanks to http://www.joelcarillet.com

The first morning that I arrived, I got up and went for a walk in the town. I had driven in with a private taxi driver by night in the pitch black so I had no idea what was waiting for me. On that morning, I used my favourite solo-traveller photography technique of shooting from the hip to capture my surroundings. This has a double benefit of 1. not looking like a tourist - if you keep your camera half-concealed, and 2. Getting great shots of people's faces when they don't think they're being watched. It has also lent a jaunty angle to all my pictures here, so let's say that's deliberate...

Where to stay: Casa Colonial

I had the pleasure of chancing upon one of the nicest and oldest families running a casa particular in Trinidad. I can't recommend it enough - I paid the equivalent of £15 per night including a freshly prepared breakfast and the family will offer you dinner every night too if that takes your fancy. Every single detail was infused with scratched and worn-away colonial grandeur from the faded colour on the walls through to the long shadows falling across the courtyard in the morning. This felt like entering another era every single time I stepped into the cool, stone reception room out of the hustle of the streets.

Trinidad is a stunning town famous for its colonial architecture, ceramics factory and outdoor dance floor. The best salsa bands in the whole of Cuba pass through here weekly any time of the year. I was there as they neared high season so was treated to spectacular live music almost every night of the week. If you're looking for salsa lessons during the day, there are plenty of brilliant teachers to choose from. If like me, you're saving salsa for the night time, then you'll probably be heading to the beach. And what a gorgeous beach it is... 

A lot of people think that Varadero is the best beach in Cuba because of its once peaceful sands but I beg to differ. Varadero and the Cayos are all white sanded, cordoned off tourist only areas where salsa is confined to hotel bar sleaze and most hotels are all-inclusive. Trinidad's beach - Ancon - on the contrary is a gorgeous, uncultivated stretch of sand. There are a couple of hotels at one end which have little beach bars spilling out of them, serving bad burgers and good mojitos. Other than that, you can walk up the stretch of sand and see mostly trees and not much else. I think this beach has everything you could wish for.. 

With thanks to http://www.joelcarillet.com

One day, I was flagging down a taxi to go to the beach, when two little paws wrapped themselves around my leg and a little nose prodded me. I looked down to see a street dog that I had met the night before starting imploringly up at me. Estrella (as I called her from then) was asking to go to the beach. It didn't take much to persuade my lovely taxi driver to take her with me. That face... when we got to the beach, it was clear she had never seen the sea before. We hung out for the day and right at the end of it, she walked over to the shore as the sun was setting and watched the sun go down. Totally mesmerised. At the end of our day, I took her back to Trinidad where she slept outside my apartment for a couple of nights before disappearing back into a pack of passing street dogs after escorting me to the nightclub up in the caves for the last time. I miss her. 

At sundown each day, I would go back to my apartment room for a few hours before grabbing a light bite and taking myself to 'The Steps' to dance. 

This is Trinidad's main square - a green and peaceful colonial quadrant, crowned with the town's church. In this windy, hilly little place, sounds stay trapped in the corners they come from so as you enter the square and walk towards the church at night the music seems to kick in all at once. As you walk round the church to the right you'll see the stairs with the stage set up for the live salsa bands and the packed, rough outside dance floor filled with chaotic dancers: old, young, graceful and less graceful. The frenzy is surrounded by tables of people drinking £1 mojitos and smoking cigars, watching the scene unfold in front of them. This was my scene where I danced from nine to midnight every night before heading up into the hills to The Cave nightclub, which is a must-do as it's the biggest nightclub actually inside a natural cave in the world.

All these pictures of me dancing were taken by the lovely travel photographer Joel Carillet who I met on the beach. His site has more incredible photos of Cuba and other destinations here. I am very grateful to him for taking these, as not only do they perfectly capture the atmosphere of the place, they are also the only pictures I have of Cuba at night because it's not realistic to dance salsa with a camera swinging around your neck. Thank you Joel.

Two more Cuba blog posts to come so watch this space... 

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Havana Good Time

Going away on your own is something that not everyone discovers the pleasure of.  This was particularly apparent when I told people what I was doing and got a load of responses along the lines of 'what's wrong. Are you and the boyf ok? Or even... 'Sorry about your breakup'.  Yeah. No... we are great thanks. It is just brilliant to travel alone (sometimes).

My Cuba trip was the first I had taken alone for 10 years but I've made a pact with myself now that I won't let amount of time pass between trips again. Before I first went away alone, I thought I was the wrong personality type for that kind of travel, but I actually learnt that I like myself a lot more than I thought. Who knew?! More importantly when it's just you you can do whatever you want whenever you want and that - my friends - is totally brilliant.

What I knew of my itinerary the cold rainy morning that I left for Gatwick was basic to say the least: Fly into Havana for two nights... and fly out of Havana again at the end of it all. Whatever happened in the middle was still up for grabs. For us super-important-metropolitan-grey-skinned-sleepy-eyed professionals, at least creating the illusion of this being 'travelling' rather than just a holiday was high on my agenda and having no real plan was an important part of that.

I arrived in Havana to a warm dusk with the day's earlier rainstorms still heavy in the air. I was greeted by the lovely Rubi (the mother from the family I stayed with) holding up a cardboard sign with my name and squinting at the incoming flight load of people to see if she could recognise my Facebook profile picture. She welcomed me with a big hug and ushered me through the hectic arrivals lounge and into the local car park round the back where one of Havana's beautiful vintage cadillacs was waiting for us. These cars are two-a-peso in Cuba, but I still got excited every time I got into a new one. Their interiors are often decorated with what seems like decades of different owner's personal touches taking dashboard-dog kitsch to new heights.

That night, I got changed and immediately slipped out into the night to find a bite to eat. Without having my bearings yet, this turned into a dark, anxious and blustery walk through the residential area of Vedado down to The Miramar, where I pretty much fell into a tourist hotel, weak from exhaustion and sleep depravation and ordered some cheese on toast before cabbing it back to bed as soon as I could. The first night aside, I quickly got my bearings in Havana and fell in love with the city's colonial buildings, bright colours and music filled streets. It's not easy finding the right place to be at nighttime. Havana is a big place and the best bands will only play one or two venues per night. More on the night life in a bit.

On day one, I walked and walked - getting lost, finding myself again but maintaining a confident stride and not getting out my map or guidebook once. I quickly discovered that if I did this, people thought I was Cubana so I barely got hassled at all. L'Habana Vieja is the easiest place to head to as a tourist (if you're taxi-ing, I'd just ask for Plaça de Armas as straight off). You'll arrive in a picturesque square just off from The Miramar and it's view of The Atlantic Ocean. This is Havana's biggest and oldest book market, set around a leafy square where second rate musicians serenade tourists for their change and book hawkers sell Che paraphernalia and old Theatre posters at ridiculously high prices. I managed to charm one of them by attempting to haggle in bad spanish and came away with three 1950s cigar papers for the equivalent of £1.50 which are now framed (at a somewhat greater cost) and will soon take pride of position somewhere in my house.

Plaça de Armas is also conveniently close to the expensive but worth it fish restaurant El Templete. I enjoyed a leisurely and long lunch here with my memoirs of Aleida March (the former Mrs Guevara). I started with boquerones and some delicious sourdough and then moved on to a lobster salad, all washed down with an un-sweetened Mai Tai. I decided to embrace the culture and drink rum cocktails with my meals - something I am not used to at all as I much prefer wine for almost all occasions but especially with food. An important thing to note: The wine in Cuba is pretty much all terrible. In a few places, they will sell you a cheap bottle of something imported from Chile or in the high class tourist places, they may may even have imported something from France but Cubans as a rule don't like or care about wine so I wouldn't bother with it. The rum however is delicious and sooo cheap no matter where you are.

The other places that I particularly enjoyed in Havana were mainly little coffee shops where bands start playing at random. I didn't feel the need to tick everything off (being on my own, there was no one to judge) and instead contented myself with soaking up the atmosphere.

I also found myself a lovely vantage point from which to look down on the city. The Saratoga Hotel is for guests only (even the bar area) but luckily I met some friendly people who then also let me quote their room number on the door. The guests of The Saratoga tend to be wealthy old men who aren't big into rooftop pools so I had pick of the sun loungers and brilliant service for the couple of afternoons that I hung out there. Total paradise and the best views of the city.

The Saratoga also proved a relaxing (though again somewhat expensive place to have lunch). A salad of roasted vegetables and fried calamari with more rum once again. On my last afternoon back in Havana for the second time, I stopped there for lunch before heading to the big working print warehouse next to the famous and very good restaurant Donna Eutamia in Havana Vieja. 

Here I fell in love with two prints of hot air balloons by a sad-eyed young artist. All his works show traditional Cuban modes of transport - the state owned buses, the coastal trains, the vintage American cars with hot air balloons attached to them. The vehicles remain earth-bound, like dead weights pulling downwards against the buoyancy of the balloons. I asked him if his work was about this feeling amongst young people that they have to get out of Cuba and he nodded sadly. Cuba is often described as a third world country with a first world mentality. It's part of the beauty of the country but in the current climate, it is also very sad. 98% of the population are literate and everyone is healthy because of brilliant state health care but the older generation can't afford to live with modern conveniences (the average monthly wage is between $15 and $30 USD, but fridges cost the same as they do in the West). I bought his prints for a relatively high price knowing that it could be money towards feeding a family for a month or so. They have come home with me as a proper souvenir of that feeling. A week later, Obama made his announcement that the US embargo will be lifted next year. 

The best Havana night I had was along The Malecon (a taxi outside of the obvious central area of Havana) to Club 1830 to see the live shows and dance salsa with some of the best trained dancers in the world. This club is where the professionals from La Floridita and La Tropicana go after work to social dance, so it's a must for any serious salsa dancer in Havana. If you're not already into salsa, I'd still check out this club as the live music and shows are particularly good. I've only got night time pictures from the town I went to next - Trinidad and then just because I met a photographer who sent me some after. I was dancing too much to look after a camera when I was here. The other night out that I had in Havana was spent at La Casa de La Musica and was only saved by meeting a particularly brilliant lambada dancer and a salsa dancer from France in the queue. As soon as we got inside it was apparent that I was the only non-working girl in there (if you get my gist) and most of the men were punters looking for one thing only. We had missed the live shows and the atmosphere was seedy and sad - a stripclub masquerading as something else. Something to know about Havana is that different venues shine on different nights and knowing what you're going for and what time it kicks off is pretty crucial. Even the great night that I found myself at in Club 1830 ended at 1am - surprisingly early when a lot of other places stay open until 3 in the morning. Just do your homework first and you'll be fine.

Rubi's beautiful colonial hallway

As I mentioned before, I started and ended my trip in Havana and both times stayed at El Mirador Estrella with Rubi and her family. Rubi's place is a Casa Particulare which means that she opens her house up to two guests at a time. These are family run businesses regulated by the state which allow people to make money commercially but are highly regulated as a result so expect to hand in your passport and visa at the door. A lot of the families will cook you breakfast and dinner so you get a lot more for you money by talking to people you're staying with and picking up local recommendations. Rubi doesn't have her guests for dinner because her beautiful little girls are still quite young so they have family time in the evening, but there are plenty of great food options in Havana for your evening dinner so it suited me perfectly.

More on other places in Cuba to come. 
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