Cienfuegos, Cuba

What should have been a 5 hour bus trip from Vinales to Cienfuegos on Cuba’s central south coast became an 8.5 hour trial after our bus broke down on the way and we had to stand on the edge of the highway with the other passengers for 3.5 hours until a replacement arrived.

Cienfuegos was originally established by French, not Spanish, settlers and this shows in the wide, open boulevards and streets. It seems to be a little more affluent than other places with some beautiful colonial era buildings in reasonable state of repair, and pockets of relative modernity amongst the dilapidation.

Public transport in Cienfuegos though is not on buses, but on carts drawn by horses, hundreds of which clip clop up and down the streets. Sadly, a few of them seemed to be a bit lame and should have been recuperating, not working, we thought.

We stumbled on a great concert when we checked out the impressive late 19^th century Teatro Tomas Terry in the city centre plaza, a couple of hours after arriving in Cienfuegos. The show was to start in 10 minutes time, so we bought tickets and went straight in. The musicians were the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, visiting from New Orleans in the USA, supported towards the end by an Afro Cuban band from Santiago de Cuba. The show was hot (so too was the theatre unfortunately, almost intolerably so) and the audience went wild – the old theatre was rockin’ that night.

We took a bicycle taxi 2km south to the pleasant seaside suburb of Punta Gorda. I was recovering from a minor stomach upset; we’ve both had a few of these in Cuba, in fact more than we’ve previously had in total during all of our travels of the last 7 years! Whiling away the afternoon in a cooling sea breeze under the palms beside the pool of the Jagua Hotel, after medication consisting of a Gastro-stop, passable toasted ham sandwich and cold beer, was just what the doctor ordered.