Traveling to Trinidad

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Trinidad is in the province of Sancti Spiritus in central Cuba and was designated one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites in 1988. A World Heritage Site is a place such as a mountain, lake, forest, building, or city that UNESCO has designated of special significance to a culture or is physically unique and worthy of preservation. Trinidad is all of that and more.The city was founded in 1514 by Diego Velazquez, a Spanish conquistador who established a total of seven colonial settlements called "villas". Trinidad was the fourth of these which include Havana. It was a center for gold mining and farming but today it depends mainly on tobacco crops.Trinidad is one of the best preserved towns in the Caribbean and has been called a "living museum". Tourists love the Spanish colonial architecture that lends the city an air of romance and intrigue. The original city consists of only a few blocks of beautiful cobblestone streets where you can see homes in soft pastels with wrought iron ornamentation as well as stunning plazas and palaces. One of the attractions of old Trinidad is the ability to tour it by horse-drawn carriage but it is particularly charming when you walk through it at a leisurely pace.Northeast of the square, or Plaza Mayor, is the beautiful Church of the Holy Trinity. After a cyclone destroyed a 17th century church on that site, Holy Trinity was built there, completed in 1892. You can see a wooden statue of Christ dating from the 1700s that was meant to be taken to Mexico; the ship carrying it was forced back to Trinidad by bad weather not one but three times. Forced to offload much of its cargo, the statue was left behind in what many thought was divine intervention. Also worth noting is the Gothic revival altar and the church's stunning Neoclassical façade.You'll find that Trinidad fairly vibrates with music and every night you'll find people dancing next to the church in the plaza. If you prefer an indoor venue you'll find discotheques; one is in the ruins of a church and another in a very large cave that was used as a wartime hospital.For ecotourism go to Topes de Collantes, a nature reserve park in the nearby Escambray Mountains. Here, you will find a small settlement and a beautiful tourism center that used to be a hospital. Thanks to the warm, moist air of the Atlantic you'll be able to walk through a lush refuge for plants and animals. There are caves, waterfalls and rivers, beautiful grottos, canyons, and natural pools of crystal clear mountain water surrounded by the Butterfly Lily, the national flower. More than 100 species of fern and 40 species of orchid grow there as well as banana trees, jasmine, wild plantain trees and about 40 species of coffee. There are giant pines, mahogany and eucalyptus trees, and magnolia trees. You'll see hummingbirds alongside the Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the colorful Cuban Tody as well as hundreds of other species.