Trinidad of colors, vol. 2

At some point i'm sitting on the sidewalk and eating my delicious cuban pizza, when somebody asks "Are you from Estonia?". Turned out that the same German couple, who i was sharing a cab ride from Havana airport to the city, had reached Trinidad and recognized me on the street. Wicked facial recognition powers, i must admit - i was looking quite different from the first time we met. I was wearing bulky sunglasses and a hat with all my hair tucked under it plus of course different clothing. I didn't recognize them even after they told me who they were, hehe.

Walking on the evening streets of Trinidad you will encounter every once in a while groups of old men jammin'. Some of them want a "little donation" later but most are just chilling in the streets and enjoying making music. Imagine sitting on the stairs of some random house, setting sun warming you and wind gently brushing by, listening to the captivating rhythmic beat of the drummer and a soft solo of the guitar player .. mm. And even if you're asked to make a donation later, 1 CUC is perfectly enough and i think 13 EEK for a lengthy open-air concert is a good deal. Plus, they are happy to get photographed :).

Curiously enough, Trinidad had by far the biggest number of children in casts. Legs, hands, fingers .. , you name it. So either Trinidad has some new doctor who likes to practice making casts or there are some very slippery stairs somewhere.

Just as any other city so far, Trinidad also has a whole city full of half-starved-to-death dogs. They are very friendly though which is somewhat of a mystery to me. Would you be able to keep your cool if you haven't gotten anything to eat for weeks and there are numerous fat and juicy German thighs walking around, all up for grabs? In any case, i developed a habit to sometimes pet them until i met "Harvey the Two-Face". A cute little dog came up to me one morning, wagging it's tail and being all-around a trooper. I reached out my hand to pet him and i swear it froze mid-way, because the dog turned suddenly around and he was a genuine "Harvey the Two-Face". There is just something so fucking scary about a cute little dog with half of it's face gone. PS! If you don't get the "Harvey the Two-Face" reference, google it!

The casa of the sisters
My casa in Trinidad was kept by two sisters in their 40-50's. It was an illegal casa, meaning it didn't have a licence and it didn't also pay the licence tax for the government, but i liked it the most of all my casas. The sisters were jolly and good cooks, house cozy and cute, not "propped up" as a hostel with meaningless repros on the wall and so on. It was somebody's home and those people loved their home. I think their casa was kind of accidentally cool and definitely my favourite of all the casas so far. The sisters were also oh so conciderate: i was going one evening out of my room around 23 pm to go walking and i catch them in the living room watching "Charlie's Angels" from the TV with sound muted off. Turned out they didn't want to bother me in case i wanted to go to sleep.

I will add here photos of their casa and though i would gladly recommend them to everybody going to Trinidad, i do not want to get them in trouble for keeping an illegal casa. Somebody in Cuba told me that if you are caught keeping an illegal casa and not paying taxes to the government, your property (house, apartment) can be repossessed and you yourself either fined heavily or imprisoned. In any case, i don't want to cause problems for them, they were absolutely lovely.



My bedroom, that stripy thing on the bed was a swan made out of a towel

Casa living room

Price was 20 CUCs per night, dinner 10 and breakfast 4, but in the end we settled on 8 and 3.
Lo siento, pero soy estudiante muy pobre y no puede pagar más :(