Doors To Trinidad

Recently I was travelling through Cuba and had heard many recommendations for the small city of Trinidad.  Trinidad is a historic city that has recently been given a new life after becoming a UNESCO site.  It has the old, huge doors and buildings with high roofs like the rest of Cuba, although here they are all brightly, cheerily coloured.

Despite the prettiness of the city, it did not meet my tastes as the jinteros there are tireless, constantly offering some service.  This is because of the levels of tourism it receives.  When I arrived I was followed for several hundred metres by a woman offering me accomodation, who completely ignored me when I was telling her that I would like to look around by myself and that I wasn't interested.  After doing a lap of the town I accidently ran into her again, and she again began to tell me about how cheap her place was and how good a value it was.  Only after I told her flatly and emphatically, stopping in the street, that I wasn't interested did she leave me alone.  The jintero nature really contradicted the quietness that the small city's old buildings seemed to exude.

I loved the tall doors and how you could open segments of them, rarely the whole door.  I particularly like this picture not just because of the doors, but for the woman, barefoot and dressed with the typical head scarf, writing in the doorway.  It hints at how, sometimes in Cuba, it feels like maybe you have gone back a few decades, with horses and carts, 1950s cars and the trusting and casual attitude that the people foster. As one old man told me - Aquí, nadie se mete con nadie.