Cowboys are my weakness

Dawson City, in the Yukon, with its dirt roads, wooden sidewalks, and swing-door saloons took me back in time to a world I’d liked to have lived in. As Pam Houston’s book title so adequately declaims: cowboys are my weakness.

The colonial old town of Trinidad in central Cuba, with its cobblestone streets, is a relic of times past. Plaza Mayor, the main square, is lined by other-worldly buildings like the Museo Romántico, in the restored Palacio Brunet mansion; the Museo de Arquitectura Colonial; and the Iglesia de la Santísima, the 19th-century cathedral with a statue of Jesus in a pose I’d never seen before. Man, did He look just a tad fed up. An empty rum bottle in a corner threw me. Was it an offering or a convenient place to discard an empty? And the Lenten posters could teach the church in Ireland or Hungary a thing or three about the relevance of communication.

The warren of narrow streets are home to markets of all sorts, actual shops selling real things, and a host of art galleries that while not quite on the Havana scale, are still to be reckoned with. The street vendors are chatty and pleasant, and perhaps at times a tad too forceful, but that’s only to be expected. Bargaining is part of the process but I found it embarrassing. It seemed cheap to haggle when people have a living to make and work within earshot of tourists sitting in cafés moaning about the exchange rate and how many hundreds of dollars it’s cost them to have brought US dollars rather than Canadian dollars or euro with them on their trip.

Had I done my homework before I left, I’d have taken Julio Muñoz of Casa Muñoz up on his offer of guided tours of an authentic Trinitario santero (priest) of Santería. And I’d had gone to see the rumba, the courtship dance, at the Palenque de los Congos Reales on Calle Echerri. But instead, I wandered the streets, up and down alleyways, taking it all in. There are plenty cafés and bars, both local and tourist, something for everyone. [As a complete aside, I never once had a bad cup of coffee in Cuba – who’d have known their coffee was that good?]

Off the beaten track, walking towards the hills past the Santería church, there’s one of a few tourist-free neighbourhoods that are so local, I felt like I was intruding. It was here I met my cowboys. What is it about a man in a hat on a horse? {Okay – so these were boy-cowboys … but ain’t the future lookin’ good?}

Trinidad is a departure spot for many. It’s not far from Playa Ancun, close to the La Boca sunset, the train depot for the Valley de los Ingenios, and probably the liveliest night life in the region. Worth a day or two to wander around.