Trinidad
Trinidad is a World Heritage site, a quaint town similar to most Latin American colonial towns. But this was still Cuba, with the familiar sites of ration queues, street pizza, kids playing baseball in the streets with a piece of wood and plastic bottle lids (with great skill!).
Having left Havana the first thing that struck me was that we hardly passed another vehicle on the road during the 7-hour journey by bus. And public transport in Trinidad was varied, some local busses looked more like cattle trucks than human transport. Trinidad was a great place for tourists and locals to mix. The police presence was far less visible, there were nightly live salsa events where locals danced with tourists. But here you could also see a larger wealth gap between the average local and those involved in tourism: there are less black market and “inventive earning” opportunities here, it's a tiny village where tourism is enormous, so those in tourism earn around US$200/month while those working for the state earn just US$10-25/month. Here the requests were almost only for clothes, plastic bags and cooking oil, virtually no one asked for money. This is where I decided to donate a few items of clothings and other helpful bits and pieces.
Here are the photos.
DISTANCE TRAVELLED (OVERLAND) SINCE USHUAIA: 34,865 KM
Having left Havana the first thing that struck me was that we hardly passed another vehicle on the road during the 7-hour journey by bus. And public transport in Trinidad was varied, some local busses looked more like cattle trucks than human transport. Trinidad was a great place for tourists and locals to mix. The police presence was far less visible, there were nightly live salsa events where locals danced with tourists. But here you could also see a larger wealth gap between the average local and those involved in tourism: there are less black market and “inventive earning” opportunities here, it's a tiny village where tourism is enormous, so those in tourism earn around US$200/month while those working for the state earn just US$10-25/month. Here the requests were almost only for clothes, plastic bags and cooking oil, virtually no one asked for money. This is where I decided to donate a few items of clothings and other helpful bits and pieces.
Here are the photos.
DISTANCE TRAVELLED (OVERLAND) SINCE USHUAIA: 34,865 KM
posted by Louise Parmenter at 12:44 am
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