The Best Music and Dancing in Colourful Trinidad

Trinidad is a slightly strange place. The streets are cobblestone and a lot of the buildings are falling apart. It made finding my casa at 3 in the morning an interesting experience, especially with almost no street lighting. I think if it was ever cold enough to have mist or fog, it would look like a scene from Resident Evil. This is one of the streets to show you what I mean…..

 

Despite this, Trinidad also has a very colourful side. There are a lot of buildings painted in bright colours – red, blue, yellow and pink. I don’t know the reason why. Perhaps it was done as a way for home/business owners to show off how rich they were from the nearby sugar plantations in the Valle de Los Ingenios (Valley of Sugar Mills)

 

 

 

One of the things that I love doing when I go somewhere is to walk off in random directions and see what I come across. In Trinidad I came across this lovely old man Jose Luis smoking a cigar. I also bumped into a lovely couple, Vania from Serbia and Marcelo from Bolivia. It was their last night in Cuba and enjoyed an all too brief chat about travel and where we are going to next. Marcelo mentioned that he has never been to Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. Why do we always want to go to places that are far away from home? I also found a tower which I decided to climb up and look toward Topes de Collantes (in the picture at the top of the page), the area of Cuba that I was going to next.

 

Hey Gringo?

As I was making my way back to the main square, I heard someone shout at me. At first I thought did they? Did they just call me a gringo? They did! So what did I do? I went over to talk to them and what a decision that turned out to be! More on that in my next post though………

 

Casa de la Musica

A trip to Trinidad wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Casa de la Musica. It is effectively a large outdoor area with steps in concentric rings. If my memory is correct it costs 2 CUC to get in. Or if you are really short of money you can just sit on the stairs at the bottom and listen for free.

Here is an example of typical salsa dancing. Pretty much every man in Cuba can dance like this. I saw one guy dancing with three people at the same time in one place. It’s probably lucky for white European men that not many Cuban men have made it to the EU.

 

I am afraid that I cannot remember the exact name given to this type of music/dance. It could be Son or that could have been one of the other videos that I shot.

 

I enjoyed my time in Trinidad and would certainly recommend it, though probably just for a couple of days unless you want to go to the nearby beach of Playa Ancon (which I didn’t get to go to). Trinidad was the only place in Cuba that I got to stay in a Casa and I wish I had been able to stay in more. Sadly my lack of Spanish was a problem as my hosts spoke no English. Oh and they had a mango tree in their house which nearly killed me on a few occasions when HUGE mangos fell down but it meant fresh fruit was always available.