Sunday 15 January 2012
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| Former San Francisco Convent, now a museum |
We arrived on Saturday, just after mid-day, on the bus from Cienfuegos to find the Casa Particular we had reserved was full. That was no problem. There are plenty of Casa in Trinidad to house every tourist. Our promised host took us around to find a Casa that suited us. The bedroom in the first one was too small but the second one, a block from the Cathedral and main square, Plaza Mayor. We are in one of two rooms in the old Colonial home of Anais and her husband, Cayuco, and two young sons. I am getting to use my horrible Spanish but the families have all been welcoming. There is a roof top patio to relax on and hang laundry, which is an almost daily chore.
Trinidad was founded in 1514 as one of seven Spanish settlements intended to bring the new colony under strong central rule. Just four years later the town was all but emptied when all the men in the town were recruited to fight in the Mexican wars. Far from Havana and badly protected, Trinidad was besieged by waves of pirates. The town languished until refugees fleeing a slave rebellion in Haiti arrived and established sugar cane plantations in the early 1800s. Newly wealthy merchants built large colonial homes and public buildings, as they did in Cienfuego. Prosperity didn’t last long. The Independence Wars in the late 19th C devastated the economy and it wasn’t until Batista passed preservation laws in the 1950s that recognized the town’s historical value as an example of Spanish Colonial life in the 1850s. So began the profitable tourist trade, culminating in a Unesco rating in 1988.
With the relaxing of regulations for private enterprise, family operated restaurants, called Paladars, expanded, both in size and quality of food. You can walk the streets of Trinidad, watching your step on the uneven cobblestones, and look into the rooms of old Colonial houses converted to Paladars. Antique furnishing and tables set with old silver and a variety of china are the rule. Saturday night we had our dinner in a room at Paladar Sol y Son, furnished as the master bedroom of a wealthy 19th C merchant. The food, very reasonably priced, was excellent. We ate in another Paladar Sunday evening that was good, but not quite as good as the first one. This is a twon to live from meal to meal.
Saturday’s entertainment was to start after 10 PM, on a stage set up next to the Cathedral and Plaza Mayor, with seating on broad, flagstone steps that stretch across the street beside the Cathedral. The audience, a mixture of locals and some tourists, were already waiting for the show to start by the time we arrived shortly after 10. Finally, just on time by Cuban reckoning, the first performance began; a slave era story told through dances with African drum and background song accompaniment. It was the same drum band we had heard practice in Cienfuego. They had told us they were to perform in Trinidad on Saturday night, and here they were. The dancers were very talented, as were all the acts. The African theme was followed by two women singers, one a traditional ballad singer and the other sang more modern Latin American pop. There was a large dance group performing Caribbean Mardi Gras numbers and a group of very limber and athletic men, joined by one young woman for a cat-like interpretive dance. The numbers continued even after we called it a night close to one AM. We were glad we had stayed up to see all the performers.
The Municipal Historical Museum is a must see venue in Trinidad, both for its historical exhibits and for the view of the town and surrounding countryside from its tower. We climbed an ever narrowing staircase to stand on a platform at 20 M above the town to pick out the terrace of our Casa just a block away. The museum is housed in a mansion built in 1827 with large, 7-8 M high rooms arranged around a courtyard. The walls and ceilings were decorated with frescoes and antique furnishing completed luxurious atmosphere.
Every Sunday, several blocks leading from the Municipal Building are closed to traffic, to allow food stalls and beer tents to be set up. Local people come in droves to listen to piped in music and to lunch on pork sandwiches, cut from a whole roast pig. Beer is available poured from kegs into plastic glasses or into 1 ½ litre water bottles. The last Sunday of the festival brought even more people to the streets. We could hardly make our way from block to block through the crowds, but the mood was happy and peaceful, as it has been all week.
Trinidad is turning out to be a longer stop than we had originally planned. There is so much more to do in the area.
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