Tue, 10 Jun 2003 10:52:32 -0700 (PDT)
RE: Finishing up my last email: The town of Trinidad in Cuba

As I was saying before I was rudley kicked out of the internet cafe:

I was on the beach near Trinidad, and bottles of rum were selling for about $1, meals cost about 33 cents, and there was music playing out of a pretty decent sound system. I opted for the bottle of water which cost $1.50, but most of the cubans prefered to drink straight rum. I belive that there was one family where the mother had a bottle of rum in one hand and her 6 month old child breast-feeding in the other, but I didn't get a close enough look to confirm. The people in Trinidad and on the beach near Trinidad seemed geneuinely more friendly and less greedy than the people in Havana .... Although on Sunday night when we went walking around for a place to eat, every street corner had someone trying to get us into their house to buy a meal (that was remeniscent of Havana).

Yesterday in Trinidad, I went horseback riding through the mountains. The scenery was pretty impressive, and at the end there was a waterfall which fell over top of a cave which you could swim into. It was pretty nice. We had to rush back from the horseback riding to catch the bus which left at 3:00. We made it back to Trinidad at about 2:30 (the guy tried to charge us for 5 hourse or horsback riding at $4 per hour, but we only paid for 4.5 hours since that was how long we went). Rushed to the house that we were staying at ... ran to the bus station ... made it there with about 2 minutes to spare .... then we sat on the bus waiting for another 15 minutes for some reason ... could have relaxed a little more had we known. I also got totally ripped of on some sandwichices which cost $2.50 each, but I was too hungry, and didn't have enough time to bargain.

I am back in Havana now for a few days, and will probably leave for Vinales on Friday.