Towns that go down a storm

Towns that go down a storm
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 14/05/2007

Even when it can't offer postcard-perfect skies, Cuba has charm to
spare, says Sarah Shuckburgh.

As we arrive in Havana, a hurricane is approaching. The Atlantic looks
grey and menacing, and huge waves splash over the Malecón seawall. Shops
and galleries are closed, and my friend Orna and I wander the streets,
watching as workmen nail plywood across doors, and stick parcel-tape on
windowpanes.

The colorful and colonial main street, in Trinidad, Cuba: Towns that go
down a storm
The colonial town of Triniada was founded by pirates in the early 16th
century

Caught in a sudden shower, we shelter in a bar packed with smiling
Habaneros, shaking maracas and dancing to the music of a nine-piece
band. Hurricanes are part of life for Cubans, and nothing can dim their
extraordinary exuberance.

But we decide to head east, out of the path of the storm. Leaving
Havana, we drive along empty roads, past mango and orange groves,
through straggling villages of one-storey shacks. People wave at us from
their rocking chairs. Others sit on their porches having their hair cut,
or playing music.

Isolated blocks of flats loom, grey and bleak in the barren countryside.
There is almost no traffic apart from the odd bicycle, some horse-drawn
carts laden with hay and occasional tractors carrying passengers.
Clusters of people wait on verges and under shady bridges, hoping for a
lift.

After several hours, we cross a scrubby ridge and drive down to the
coast road, where huge waves crash on to a rocky beach. This is the
Caribbean, but it looks like the North Sea - opaque and churning, with
white horses rising with the gusts of wind. Tree stumps and ruined
shacks mark the path of another recent hurricane. High winds end any
hopes of snorkelling in calm turquoise waters.

We are heading for the colonial town of Trinidad, founded by pirates in
the early 16th century. When slavery ended, the town fell into decline
but the colonial architecture survived, and many buildings have now been
restored.

Our driver drops us at a sky-blue casa particular, an 18th-century
sugar-planter's house. Our landlady, Yolanda, answers the door wearing a
nightie and slippers. She welcomes us into a series of lofty rooms with
stencilled walls, wooden ceilings, chandeliers, and tall windows fitted
with wooden grilles instead of glass.

The house is crammed with religious bric-a-brac, plastic flowers and
family mementos. In our bedroom at the top of a narrow stone staircase,
flimsy drapes billow with each gust of wind, and the awning on the
terrace flaps noisily. A green, curly-tailed lizard eyes us from the
flaking ceiling.

We set off to explore the enchanting maze of narrow streets and leafy
plazas, colonnaded courtyards and dilapidated two-storey houses with
startlingly bright stucco and windows outlined in broad white or
terracotta stripes.

The town is often crowded with visitors, but today, after several days
of wind and rain, we are almost the only tourists. At a tiny grocery, we
watch locals hand their ration books to the elderly shop assistant, and
come away with a few white eggs, a small loaf or a bar of soap.

Trinidad's main square, the matchless Plaza Mayor, is edged with
pastel-painted colonial houses. White picket fences divide the central
garden from the cobbles.

The Museo Histórico Municipal nearby was once the home of a sugar baron,
who inherited a fortune by killing a slave-trader, marrying his widow
and then murdering her, too. The house has lofty rooms with intricate
wall paintings.

From the tower, we have magnificent views over the jumble of roofs,
corrugated-iron awnings, washing lines and water tanks, and into tiny
courtyards where women are doing laundry, cooking on outdoor ovens and
serving meals to their menfolk.

The sound of son rises from a scrubby yard, where a group of musicians
has gathered under the trees. Beyond, to the south, stretches the
shimmering silver Caribbean, and to the north rises the wooded slopes
and knobbly ridges of the Guamuhaya mountains.

Orna and I stop at a taberna for papaya milkshakes and guava-filled
pastries, and enjoy an impromptu performance by locals on drums and
maracas. A rusty old American car lurches past, belching black exhaust.

We wander on, peeping into courtyards and alleys. Inside one doorway,
white-robed devotees are placing offerings at a Santería altar. This
curious Cuban religion blends African tribal beliefs with the
Catholicism of Spanish plantation owners.

On the altar, a black doll is surrounded by symbolic offerings of blood,
rum, food and water - this is Yemayá, a black madonna, goddess of the
sea and mother of all other deities.

We pass a school, where children in blue and red neckerchiefs jostle at
a window, staring at us and reaching through the bars. A teacher beckons
us in, and proudly shows us the shabby concrete classrooms, where rows
of uniformed children are copying from blackboards, chanting in unison,
or performing eurythmic exercises.

On every wall hang posters of Che Guevara, whom pupils pledge, each day,
to emulate.

Later, we hail a taxi-carriage and the horse sets off at a trot over the
huge uneven cobbles, as we slither and bounce on the wooden seat under
the canopy. The streets are free of dung because horses wear effective
canvas nappies.

We pass makeshift stalls selling fly-strewn slabs of pork, wheelbarrows
of brown bananas, young girls sitting by baskets of herbs, pizzas
cooking in charcoal ovens, and an old woman dragging a black piglet on a
string.

Locals crouch on doorsteps, men in straw hats, women in colourful
turbans, enjoying the cool breeze. The streets are lined with one-storey
houses, the once-vibrant yellow, blue, green or pink stucco peeling and
flaking. From our vantage point, we can see through window grids into
dark, sparsely-furnished front rooms.

The horse halts outside a tobacco factory, a grim-looking, open-sided
place where rows of workers - mainly women - produce fat cigars, rolling
a blend of tobacco in a binder leaf, pressing in wooden racks, and
gluing a soft outer layer of fine leaves, specially grown under cheesecloth.

From a lectern at the front, a worker reads aloud - state news in the
morning, literature in the afternoon. Brands of Cuban cigars are
sometimes named after books that the workers have enjoyed - Romeo y
Julieta, or Montecristo.

As dusk falls, we stand on the breezy terrace outside our bedroom,
listening to the sounds of dogs barking, car horns beeping, children
calling, the rattle of homemade go-karts on the cobbles, the judder of a
motorbike and chickens clucking. Palm trees jut above the red and yellow
roofs. Small birds dart through the violet sky, as distant hills darken
to a misty grey.

Yolanda cooks us supper - thin soup dotted with chunks of potato, a
whole red snapper with fried plantains, yucca, rice and beans, and, for
pudding, a dusty pink jelly made from local guavas, served with salty
curd cheese.

After supper, Orna and I venture out again, following the throb of music
through the cobbled streets to a small plaza by the Casa da Música. Here
we find hundreds of locals dancing to a nine-piece band, a crumbling
stucco wall behind them forming an artistic backdrop.

The atmosphere is electric. Elderly gentlemen in natty suits and white
shoes perform passionate salsas with their snowy-headed wives, while
younger dancers throw their partners with elegance, abandon and skill.
We find an empty table at the open-air café and order mojitos, gaudily
striped green, white and red rum cocktails garnished with sprigs of mint.

The wind is getting up, and twice a power-cut plunges us into darkness.
But the musicians continue undaunted, as spectators light flickering
cigarette lighters or small torches. At first reluctantly, and then more
confidently, Orna and I dance with an assortment of partners, old and
young, groping our way back to our table with each blackout.

The lights are still out at midnight as we stumble over the cobbles to
Yolanda's, and candles light us to bed. Wind and rain rage until dawn,
and in the morning the electricity is still off, the flowerpots on the
terrace have crashed on to their sides, and there is no water in the taps.

But outside, Trinidad glistens like a polished gem. The sun is shining
from an azure sky, and a fresh breeze brushes our cheeks. The storm has
passed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=/travel/2007/05/14/etcuba114.xml