Cienfuegos y Trinidad

The rural countryside is beautiful here. It’s not much different than being out in the country in other places, but at the same time it is incomparable. We drive by miles and miles of bright green sugar cane stalks, orange trees, and open fields. We drive by farmers in their straw hats, riding by on their horses, tending the crop, or taking a siesta in the shade of a leafy tree. We drive by dogs strutting down the road, families in horse-drawn buggies, and the tiny wooden shacks with thatched roofs that line the roadway. Red dirt roads lead into distance, pink and yellow flowers lining the thin wire fences. We drive by the evidence of time and history, past billboards with Fidel’s face the size of a building, past Jose Marti statues in the schoolyard. We drive through towns that looked the same 50 years ago, 100 years ago.
We drove through Cienfuegos and down the Montañarusa (rollercoaster) road to get to our hotel which sat between Cienfuegos and Trinidad in the Escambray mountains and right on the Caribbean ocean. It was a beautiful location and nice to get out of the city for awhile. After settling in to our rooms which were newly built after hurricane damage wiped out the older cabanas on the water, we headed to dinner where we dined on typical Cuban food and were serenaded by a guitar/singer duo with sad faces and off-key voices.
Saturday was spent in Cienfuegos, a little city on the water with colorful buildings and lots of character. The roads were lined with well-lined sidewalks filled with children playing, people on bikes, or neighbors relaxing and chatting. We started the day off in a town outside of the city called Palmira, visiting a couple of Santeria hot spots. We saw three different Santeria altars lined with colorful fabrics and eerie statues. On the way back, we drove down a boulevard of times past, beautiful old palaces, well taken care of as tourist spots. They had intricate details and brightly painted towers, all of them looking out over the turquoise water. After, we strolled the streets of the town of one hundred fires. We checked out the Prado of Cienfuegos, the main street of the town, where there were little tourist shops, kiosks with homemade jewelry, and cigar shops. Getting lost in the grid of dusty roads, we found ourselves at the waterfront. It was a quiet, peaceful waterfront with little people, a horse, and some birds pecking at the fishy decks of the still fishing boats. The sunset made the sky a delicious orange rainbow.
The next day we spent at Trinidad, a clean, colorful city in the hills. The streets made of rounded stones led up and down hills lined with green, yellow, and blue buildings, horses, and tourists. Although Trinidad is one of the better kept up and therefore gorgeous cities of Cuba, it is only because it is a tourist site. Every direction we turned there was signs of tourists, either in flesh and bones or in the evidence of donkeys for rent for photos or a stand selling brand new straw hats. Trinidad has a lot of history and has its charm, but I imagine it lost some in its transformation into a tourist site. After drinking one too many Chanchancharas (a refreshing cocktail of honey, lemon, water, aguardiente, and ice), we moved on to the Valley of Plantations. As you might imagine, the view was breathtaking, and it was a reminder of the country’s history of slavery. We looked down upon a valley of all shades of green, upon old sugar cane and new, upon palm trees swaying in between the fields of green, and upon the majestic mountains on the other side. It was quite a sight as the sun shone down on the curves of the valley, on the memories and vague images of slaves working hard in the fields. But the new history is never forgotten, with Jose Marti poised next to us in the grass in his ever-frozen, stony stare.