My trip to Cuba pt. 2

After spending half an hour walking around the cobbled streets in Trinidad, I told my boyfriend “this city shares the first place with Cinque Terre in Italy of being the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to.” The city offered everything just how I like it. A relaxed and nice atmosphere, beautiful surroundings and nature, happy people, and a great little public square that invited people to live music, salsa dance, and cold drinks every night.

Waking up after a night of too many Pina Coladas, Mojitos, Cuba Libres, and salsa dancing, made us take a low key day and spent it at the beach. The beach was empty, which made us feel like we owned it, it was quiet, the water was turquoise, the sand was white and soft, and we treated our hangovers with fresh coconut water directly from the coconut, and this mix proved to be the best cure for hangovers.

We had two amazing days in Trinidad until we had to go back to Havana to catch our flight to Cayman Islands before arriving back to New York City. This ended up being a whole different story, and to make a long story short, let me just say, getting back to New York ended up taking almost 48 hours, it included a mistakenly booked flight (22nd of March instead of 22nd of February…), a lost iPhone, big issues with Cuba’s missing or non existing internet and phone connection, and a detour through Cayman Islands and Miami.

I have a hard time explaining and defining my opinion about Cuba. I had great experiences there, and not least I learned a lot about how many different ways people live on this planet. Cuba is so beautiful and special in an out of this world kinda way. I was so happy that my boyfriend speaks Spanish so we were able to talk to the people of Cuba and listen to their stories, which taught me a lot. It was healthy for both of us to get away from WiFi and to be present and live in the moment and enjoy the presence. The joy Cubans express through music and dance is simple but yet so confirmatory. The bad part about Cuba was the hard living circumstances we saw many places around the island. No clothes, destroyed houses and streets, intrusive people, bland food, and missing internet and phone connections when you stand in an airport for four hours trying to figure out how to get out of the island. Looking back on these pictures, I am so happy and I feel so lucky that I got to discover all these amazing places in Cuba. I hope you liked my little travel diary!