Cuba 2009

Trip was a one week vacation from Nov 7-Nov 15.

Cuba is a very beautiful & rustic place. It is very safe to travel to . I would say this was contributed by their government's strict sentence to criminals, even to small crimes, as small as pocket picking. So they have literally not too many crimes. They do not dare to commit a crime.

Cuba is a very interesting country, to me anyway. It has no trades or whatsoever with the States. There is no American tourists, so to say. I guess there is no flight from US to Cuba or any travel packages to Cuba offer in the States. The myth is that no American travelers allow but we have met a couple tourists from SF in Cuba, so there is ways. Canadians are viewed as the most welcome creatures in Cuba, I felt very special for the first time as a Canadian traveling overseas. I would say over 60% are from Canada (a lot from Quebec, so you will hear a lot of French speaking tourists) and the rest makes up of German, Russian, Italian & English. A little from Japan and China but they come visit on a cruise ship.

Day 1:
It was a late flight leaving at 10pm. I was very nervous in the morning. Due to the facts that I was leaving my dog with my mom for the first time. Not sure how well my dog is able to cope with that. Second of all, thanks to my friend, John, who warned me about a hurricane (Ida) was going to hit Cuba. Weather forecast changed from cloudy to rain every single day in Varadero the week I was going to be there. SUCKS! I have enough rain in Vancouver, don't need more in Caribbean. I was worried.

On the way, I kept praying to God and hoping that HE will move or stop the hurricane like how Jesus stopped the storm. Silly prayer but a prayer with faith that "Nothing is Impossible to Him". Now that reminded me how long I have not been praying with faith and the "fire", since the last time I prayed to God for Elise and Kit. That was the last time He spoke to me. I think HE spoke to me too this time I don't remember what it was. I do miss that close feeling with God. I think he did say something equv. to, "yes, yes, I will move the hurricane, will you stop bragging about it every 1 minute?", haha. I felt better and from then on, I knew the weather is going to be better. ;)

We were to fly 6 hrs to Varadero arrived at 7am Cuban time, our 4am PST. We flew Air Transat for the first time. I am actually quite happy with them except for the seats are quite small. My neighbor, a tall white male was pretty much leaning against his wife but his arm was invading my zone. But we got what we paid for. Surprisingly, the air hostesses on our flight to Cuba were very impressive. Young pretty French girls, from Quebec, well groomed and every bit of them looks just perfect. Much better than Air Canada's, sorry to say that.

Arrived at the airport after the whole night without any sleep. The air is humid, it was warm. It was very gloomy like I expected, very disappointing. Cuba should not look like that.

But I was on vacation, away from work, there is nothing better than that.

On the 45 mins bus ride (bus is chinese made) to the hotel, hubby felt asleep. The guide was yapping about Cuba and the check in procedures...blah blah blah. And then he started to mention that the hurricane will not hit Cuba and he promised the weather will be good tomorrow. WOW! yes! Thanks God.

After 45 mins, we arrived at our hotel, La Salina, which is at the end of the peninsula of Varadero. It is a huge hotel. We were sent to this hall and we had separate check-in and was given a bottle of Havana Club rum. Nice! After a quick check in, we were taken to our room in this shuttle cart.

The first day, gloomy and we missed our night of sleep, pretty much we just rested and had a few mojito.

We walked around the hotel and found this notice.

Funny, isn't it? A 16 years old is not allowed into the gym and no Smooking?

The buffet food at the hotel is not up to par, in my opinion, but I still enjoyed every bit of it. My favorite was their chicken dish. The chicken was so flavorful. Not the sauce but the chicken itself actually tastes like a chicken, it tastes even better than the free ranch chicken in Canada. Their chicken is not only free ranch and very organic. Have not had a "tasty" chicken for a long long time probably since a freezer has been invented. And their papaya...OMG and oh so sweet. Unlimited supply every day. Love it. I regretted that I did not take a picture of it.

First night, I think we had Italian Food at the a la carte restaurant. I had somewhat high expectation because a la carte at a 4 * should not be too bad. It turned out to be a disappointment. Almost the same quality as the buffet food. Again, we just laughed about it and enjoyed the time.
I had a pork chop and hubby had a chicken.

Do not look appealing huh? But mine was actually not too bad.

Besides the cigar and rum, the coffee in Cuba is really good too.
It is totally comparable to those we had in Italy. I had at least one every day.

Our room TV (chinese brand) has almost every channels you wish for. Chinese, Italian, Spanish, American, CNN, weather, HBO... However, our chinese made TV only shows red and green colors. So everything we saw on TV were red & green only. Ofc, weather is our most concern at the time. Watching CNN, it has the hurricane Ida news every 20 mins. It was coming straight to Cuba and amazingly, it literally shifted left horizontally and passed between Mexico and Cuba. OMG (really!), HE moved the hurricane like he said he would!! Praise to the Lord. ;)

Day 2 in Cuba, Nov 9
The morning was not too bad but it was still a little cloudy. We were able to dip into the water for a little bit. We spent rest of the day by the pool to read a book. Pretty much like a holiday is supposed to be, DO NOTHING.

At night after dinner, we went to the beach and smoked my very first cigar.

The cigars in Cuba are really inexpensive. We bought one each of different brands just to try out how we like it, it is about $3 CAD each or less (depends on the size). It was there we met our new friends. I call them the Twins.

The twins are a pair of dogs. My bet is that they are brothers, about the same age. yes, I am the dogs expert too. They do and go everywhere together. They are inseparable. 3 nights we were at the beach smoking our cigars, they were there. They would sat by us and kept us company for as long as we were there. Occasionally, there were other guests walked by the beach, one of them would go up and guard them until they left. The other one would stay with us, sometimes came over asking for hugs and loves. The other times they would chase a playful bird along the beach, from the left to the right and again right to left. That is what we called "a simple happy life". Birdie gone, they would come back and sit by us again.