As every morning in Cuba, this one began with a small, strong coffee on the terrace in the sun. Just after that Alessandro and Emilia, the two Italians were ready and we got into the Taxi that arrived at the door of our Casa. To my disappointment it was not a 1950s Cadillac, but 2000ish chinese Geely.
No harm done, I'm sure it will get us there safely. As we drove off, Alessandro (who spoke good spanish) engaged in heated discussion with driver - all I understood was that we had to stop somewhere to change something.
So we drove through the village and ended up at the drivers cousin or brother or something who was "a mechanic" - basically he had a work bench in his garden.
Here we were going swap cars to a Hyundai Atos, as the car we were in, the Geely, didn't have a tourist transportation license and there was a checkpoint just outside of town.
After some further discussion between Alessandro and the driver it turned out that we had to first get the breaks on the Atos repaired before driving anywhere. This task was done in the garden of the drivers cousin/brother. We could observe all while sitting in the Geely. There were plenty of parts lying around the Garden and I'm sure if he didn't have the correct one he could have manufactured one out of some pipes and a few screws.
Anyway, after some time our Atos had "new" and trustworthy (?) breaks and we swapped into that car.
Cool, now we are ready to go to Cienfuegos, we though. No - after some further discussion between the driver and Allesandro it seemed that the driver had planned to drive both cars, the empty Geely and the Hyundai (which had the tourist license) with us in it past the checkpoint and then swap us around back to the Geely and take us with that one to Cienfuegos and back. I haven't really understood why they wanted to do this.
It was very confusing to all of us, but it got better. We were now told, that we would have to leave Cienfuegos again at 1pm because the Geely had to be driven to be back in Trinidad to be driven to Havana at 2pm. This would not give us more than an hour and a half in Cienfuegos.
So Allesandro told the driver he either drives us in the Hyundai to Cienfuegos now or we would just go back to the Casa. Suddenly it was possible to do that but we had to overcome another hurdle: get some petrol for the Hyundai. We drove around town - yes we were still in Trinidad - and talked to three different people until we got 11 liters of petrol for 10 CUC (90 US cent per litre - this is about a days average Cuban income, for one litre).
Finally after at least an hour of this we were on the way to Cienfuegos and got there by 11:30.
The city itself is named after the Capitain General of Cuba at the time and is also a colonial town which is located on large basin called Bahia de Cienfuegos. We walked around the Jose Marti Square and down some nice pedestrain streets with many art shops. According to the travel guide the town has a strong french influence but It just looked like colonial Caribbean town to me.
We ended up at a Harbour pier and decided to walk down the Malecon (coastal promenade to the south). It was very hot today and quite a workout until we got to the end - Punta Gorda. So on the way back we agreed it was time to reward ourselves with a cold beer.
We also found a shop that would sell to tourists. So far I had not been able to find a sort of supermarket where I could buy a bottle of water at a none-tourist price. This was not much cheaper (0.7 CUC for 1.5 l) but better than getting the in the casa Particulars (1 CUC for 0.35 l).
We went back to the square where we were going to meet the driver again at 3pm and a little to our surprise he was there waiting for us.
It was time to continue our taxi ride adventure. On the way out of town, the driver called someone from his mobile phone and a couple of minutes drive we stopped at a petrol station but didn't fill up the car. Without any explanation the driver went into the little hut and didn't return for 10 or 15 minutes. All three of us were now clueless of what was going on and found it very strange.
Then, when he appeared back with a little bottle of lemonade, he filled up a canister of petrol and got back into the car.
Up until now, the driving style was quite random, driving in the middle of the road and breaking and accelerating for no reason, but now he was just driving slow. When suddenly we met the aforementioned Geely coming towards us we understood why. The Geely which was now on it's way to Havana and the Hyundai both stopped in the middle of the road and our driver got out. At this point all of this was more an event of curiosity for us than annoying.
While nearly being killed by a big lorry that came down the road our driver, filled up the Geely in the middle of the road with the petrol he just bought at the Petrol station.
What we worked out is that there was no more petrol available in Trinidad and so we had to pick some up along the way and pass it on to the Geely for him to make it to the next Petrol station before it headed to Havana. At least this is what we concluded from all these random events.
The highlight of today was certainly not the visit of Cienfuegos but the trip there and back.
Eventually we did make it home and it was time for a Siesta to recollect all the events of the day.
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