Crepes in Trinidad

Worked out why the only station we can get on the lovely, new plasma flat screen TV hanging on our wall is a snowy glimpse of Channel 62 - a Spanish children's cartoon station. They might be able to advertise that every room has a TV, but unfortunately they can't advertise that every TV has an aerial attached. Oh well, perhaps next year.

Today was 'Free Day In Trinidad' on our itinerary. Funniest free day I've ever had. It would be best described as a day in Trinidad where you choose one of the guides preferred options. It's like the conjuror's three card trick referred to in "Yes Minister". 'You always present three options, Minister. One option is always found to be unsuitable and will quickly be discarded, and the other two options upon close examination turn out to be the same. Then they will always choose the option that you want.'

So we chose to go bushwalking in a nearby national park, ensuring that we would be back by lunchtime, and everybody (aka our guide) would have the afternoon to themselves. A lovely walk through the forest pointing out various birds ('We don't have lots of animals in Cuba. But we do have lots of birds'). Saw a snake, huge termite nests in trees, wasp colonies building mud nest on the cliffs of the river gorge - even two geckos 'having fun' as our guide put it.

About 3km along the trail we came to a lovely waterfall with a very deep rock pool underneath it. Luckily the only other occupants were leaving, so we had it all to ourselves for half an hour or so, until we tagged with another small group who arrived as we were leaving. It was a lovely spot, and surprisingly close to the town, though I'm pretty sure that the road hasn't had any work done on it since Castro came to power.

Interestingly our guide made the comment as we thudded into another deep pot hole, that it was proof that the socialist system was ultimately unworkable, as there was no point in putting in any work on a road to a park. Never thought you could wax so lyrical over a pothole. Didn't try to disillusion our guide by telling him that in good old capitalist outback Queensland, the local councils can't see the point either. Just try getting to Thrushton NP.

Most of the houses in the town have their front door opening on to the narrow, cobbled streets, and lots of those houses have some kind of a small business being conducted in their front room. So during the day you wander down the road, glancing in the front doors to find a ladies hairdresser, drinks being sold, crafts being displayed, or bread rolls being filled with a bit of cheese. However, none of the houses have signs, so when they shut their door at night you have no clue that a business exits. You have to know exactly which house door to go to to get your bananas, or your tub of ice cream, or your bottle of alcohol. I'm sure that every local just learns which doors to go to, and spends most of the day gathering the various things they need for dinner, but a tourist can't grasp it in a day.

Though restaurants for tea are well marked, it makes finding lunch a real challenge, with few signs and no prices. However, today we lucked upon a house with no external sign that made crepes, so we sat there with another smug looking English couple and enjoyed a nutella and banana crepe for lunch. Brilliant. Have you ever seen nutella in a 5kg jar. Neither had I, but I guess it arrives in a shrink wrapped box accompanying some poor traveller at the airport who has to wait 3 hours to get it through customs.

Talking of food, we had dinner on our balcony again enjoying the sunset. This time, though, we had asked our guide to write out a note to our host in very polite Spanish asking very nicely if we could could only have three of the five courses offered, so that we didn't waste more than their family eats for the day.

Went back down again to the main city square after dark where the local steel band fires up, and a group of local dancers do traditional Cuban dances. Hard to describe really. It's really a cross between square dancing where you are in pairs and sets, but the dancing is salsa dancing. Very physical dancing as you would expect, and each set would last 20-30 minutes, with the choreographer at the front blowing a whistle every minute or two to progress the dancers to the next pattern. They would generally salsa shuffle in two lines up to the end of the city square, with the crowd parting to let them through, then they would turn and grab their partners hand opposite, and do some sort of salsa pattern with their partner or sometimes with a set of 4 couples as they gradually danced back down to the band.