Trinidad, Cuba

Trinidad.

Varadero was fun. We spent the days at the beach and the nights at the Casa Del La Musica(House of music). The best night was probably their version of a uni night as there was tons of local people there and not many tourists. Tomas met up with a Chilean girl we had met at the beach who conveniently for Zag had lots of friends…one in particular that looked like she’d just jumped off the cover of a magazine. The worst night there was the tourist night, the cover charge tripled and the place was full of Canadians learning how to salsa. Plus side? Open bar, I think we smashed about 10 Mojitos each and a few beers then bailed(with about 5 beers stuffed in our pockets as they weren’t opening them.) Cheers!

Our taxi driver from Veradero to Trinidad was a rude ass, piece of. After charging us more to leave at a certain time of day, he was two hours late and then spent the whole 5 hours screaming into his phone while the four us of tried with varying levels of success to sleep. My iPod JUST managed to drown out the sound of his voice until he started slapping me on the leg asking for something. I had no idea what it was and Tomas(Who was even angrier then I) told us that it was paper. I got my notebook out of my bag, open a page which he grabbed and tore out a piece of paper before yelling “PEN!”

The following day we walked out to the cascades or waterfalls. Most people take a tour which includes horse riding but we opted to walk(The horses are in pretty bad conditions). Took us a little over an hour and we arrived to discover that due to the time of year there was no waterfall. Massive waterhole though which we jumped in an swam around for a bit.

In complete contrast to most displays of Cuban Hospitality, the man living across from our Casa was a top bloke. After chatting to Tomas across the street from his first floor balcony to ours, Pedro invited us over for and sent his two daughters off to get a bottle of rum and his wife brought out snacks. It was cool getting to know some locals, he worked as a maintenance man at one of the hotels and his daughter was studying whilst working at the Casa Del La Musica. I’d heard a few people talking about the ‘Mountain Club’ in Trinidad so was really excited to check it out however she informed me it was ‘closed for renovations’ which, being in Cuba, could mean it would never open again. Pedro challenged us three boys to a push-up competition after a few rums which he drew with Tomas and Zag. This is my way of saying that I lost.

After the warm rain cleared we headed out again to the Casa Del La Musica which we were told is the best in Cuba. Looked like a great space but was closed. Before moving on somewhere else I was approached by one of three young cuban guys dressed in what I could only guess was their attempt at looking….gay? Two of them were wearing these shiny tacky looking snapbacks and they asked me for a lighter despite all three of them having lit cigarettes in their hands. As we headed off to another club the one with beautiful blue eyes yelled out ‘I love you’ to me which I found hilarious as its totally something I would do. The rest of our night involved a tonne of rum, meeting some prostitutes who were relieved to find out I wasn’t interested in what they were selling, doing the Macarina around the streets and Kim and Zag fighting. The latter being the funniest, she started chasing him around the streets screaming at him about something….