Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:39:34 -0700 (PDT)
The town of Trinidad in Cuba

I went to a small town called Trinidad (pop 30K) with a Swiss girl named ¨Nicole¨ (the 31 year old medical doctor ... ie. NOT the swiss chick with parasites). It is really quite nice, and doesn´t have the pollution and traffic that Havana has. It is about a 5 hour drive south east of Havana, and lies on the south coast of Cuba (as opposed to Havana which is on the North coast).

I left on Saturday morning super early, got there at about 2 in the afternoon, and was super tired, so didn´t do much but had a nap. For $10, we were fed an awesome meal, with an entire fish (about 2ft long), rice, beans, fried banana, fruit juice, and vegtables. There was so much food, we couldn´t eat it all.

After that, we went to the city center, and hung out for a while, had a couple of beers, and listened to live salsa music (which you hear everywhere in cuba). Then, we decided to to go to a disco, which was probably the coolest disco I have ever seen: We took a cab for $4 for about a 10 minute ride out of Trinidad, to a sort of mountain/foothill where there is a disco called ¨las Cuevas¨ (the caves). We got there, and we though that we were at the wrong place, because we couldn´t hear any music, and didn´t really see many people. We walked up the trail on the side of the hill, and still couldn´t hear any music, but there was a cave entrance ther, and there were people sitting at the desk accepting cover charge. For $7 we could enter and have an open bar (ie all drinks included) ... so we went in and started descending down this cave during which, we could start to hear music. Finally, after descending about 4 floors through this tunnel, we came to a fork in the tunnel, with one arrow pointing to the bathrooms, and the other pointing to the disco. We went over the the disco part, and the tunnel opened up into a giant cave, with staligmites and staligtites, with a dancefloor, disco lights, and a bar, and everything that a normal bar has. It was super cool. At one part, there were some stairs (about 3 steps) to get up to the platform where the bar was located. I was standing near the bar most of the night, and I personally witnessed 4 people slip and fall on the stairs as they tried to get down to the dance floor, although no one seemed to get seriously injured. The place was filled mostly with tourists, but it was pretty good, and it was playing normal (ie non cuban) music.

The next day, I went to the beach near Trinidad, and I think that I finally understand why all the guide books say that cubans are friendly. Everyone there was offering us rum to drink, and talklng to us in a friendly way. Afterward, we saw that rum costs about $1 per bottle, and all the cubans were drinking it straight ... families, everyone.

Gotta go now cause they are kicking me out of the internet cafe so that they can eat lunch.