Blogs from Cuba, Central America Caribbean - page 45

After several frustrating seasons where weather, health or other circumstances prevented us from making a real ocean crossing to another country....this year we finally made the jump to Cuba, and back! There is no simple way to describe the experience. The outbound crossing was extremely challenging for us. Wind and wave conditions exceeded predictions considerably...despite checking 3 different sources for weather they all proved to be wrong. The 108 nautical mile crossing took us 24 hours, most of it hand steered as our auto pilot was overwhelmed by the size and strength of the waves (we found a clump of seaweed on top of our dodger when we were cleaning up the day after arrival.) But we made it and were glad to have achieved a "bucket list" goal. Our buddy boat, Lorbas, with Rick & ... read more

April 6 Happy birthday to me! Carmen our host gave me a Cuba key ring and there was a card from the Beatons, after breakfast it was off to Baracoa, our last day in the bus with Ivan. We stopped at Guantanamo for coffee then it was a scenic drive to Baracoa over a big mountain range, 5 hours drive all up. After checking into our casa with Miriam and family about 2, we set off on an orientation tour by local van, which turned out to be a surprise birthday BBQ for me!! Wow! The van arrived at a lovely river, where there was a roast suckling pig on a spit and a small group of musicians singing happy birthday! Lunch was amazing, pork, black bean dish, rice, salad, plantain chips and bread, served in ... read more

March 30 Left about 9 for Trinidad via Santa Clara, where we visited the Che Guevera museum, memorial and burial place, very interesting and most important to Cuban people. Che and the Castro brothers are national icons and everywhere you go there are photos, posters and signs about them and "Vive la Revolucion"! There are statues and monuments all over Cuba to other heroes of the revolution, such as Jose Marti, Camilo Cienfuegos and Frank Pais, and streets across Cuba are named for them. It was a beautiful but very steep and windy drive through to Trinidad across the mountains and down through the national park. Got to Trinidad in the early afternoon and our group went off to different home stays (casas) for the next 3 nights. We stayed with Eugenia and Nancy, who were ... read more

Let me just preface this with the fact that I felt pretty horrible the entire time I was away (started before I left and didn’t have anything to do with the food or anything)… I also didn’t have a single drink the entire time I was there (see point #1). So with that in mind, here we go... Cuba - take one. So I’m trying a different kind of adventure this time around… first go at an all-inclusive and my first time in Cuba. Direct to Cuba flights from my city don’t start until the week after spring break (wtf?), so I drove to Moncton to meet up with the girls. Sunwing flight was delayed about three hours, but I knew that before I even left for Moncton. No big deal. Hung out with the girls, ... read more

Departure day. We were lucky because we had a full group we had our own bus to take us all the way through to Baracoa which was really nice because we stayed with the same driver, were able to spread out on the bus and also leave belongings we didn't need on there. We were supposed to go to the Che Memorial at Santa Clara today however Tony realised it would not be open so as a group we decided that tomorrow we would backtrack to the memorial from Cienfuegos before continuing onto Trinidad. Tony arranged for us to have a walking tour of old Havana as there was more to do and see in the area than in Cienfuegos. Saw much of the same stuff as yesterday but the group was a lot smaller and ... read more