Adios !

So ofter 30000 miles of traveling through 15 countries over 167 days we finally arrived back in London on 30th January 2008.

The last few days...

Back in Habana for the last few days of our trip we did the tourist thing and visited our first and last Cuban museum, the Havana Club rum centre (awful). Taking time to have a nice meal, sit, drink beer (yes - you can have too many mojitos) and take in the surroundings we relaxed for the last 2 days of our trip.

Buying some cheap posters with our last Pesos we decided to have a few last mojitos and then get some food for our last night. As we sat sipping our mojitos listening to live son (a typical Cuban music) a local sat with us trying to help us with the usual cigar supplies. As we explained we had only enough pesos for the taxi to the airport he pointed out that we also needed $50 for airport tax, a fact we had conveniently forgotten in our budgeting. Checking Mikes wallet we had enough to pay for the drinks in front of us and the airport tax - gone was our last meal and night of drinking.

Instead we decided to buy two cans of beer and a bottle of water and spend our last evening smoking our last cigar sat in a park opposite the tourist restaurants listening to the music for free. With some left over chocolate for dinner we had a very romantic, if pikey last night of travelling!

More Mojitos and diving

With an early bus we went to another tourist only peninsular to put our brand new diving skills to the test. Rushing us into the boat the atmosphere was slightly different to our first diving experiences with no time for checks, people getting lost or running out of air and no dive planning. This wasn't going to put us off seeing some beautiful coral reefs and we decided to take another trip immediately (for which the boat hardly stopped to let us out!). Once down under 10 meters of water we did our safety checks and headed into some channels between the reefs. Unfortunately Lisa's mouth peice broke off and left her sucking water, but luckily we had good training so her buddy (Mike) was there to sort her out. Carrying on we saw some sponges, worms and eels, felt some strange creatures and actually had a really good time. Wouldn't recommend Cuba for safe diving though. We were left with a couple of hours to grab some rays and make sure we were slightly brown upon our return to wintery England. (thanks to Phil and Semanthi for this timely gift!)

The next day we went to spend a full day in the sun, upon arriving at the tourist only island we had our welcome drink and headed to the beautiful white sand beach. Just as we got there however the clouds started to build and within 20 minutes it was raining heavily. So we made some new friends including a French Mr Bean lookalike. Spending most of the day dodging rain we decided to meet our new friends out for a drink in the evening so spent the evening dancing in Vinales successfully trying to empty the 3 bottles of rum on our table for our last night in rural Cuba.

Dealing with Cuba in Vinales

As we got off the coach we were greated by our new family (the last one had rung ahead for us) and taken to a lovely home. Within seconds of arriving Mike hit his head on a low beam and was bemused to find the mother of the family rubbing his head (and not his new wife). We were introduced to the family with the highlights being the cute dog, the stray cat and the mother (who was a dead ringer for Anne from Little Britain). After a walk to a nearby hotel to use the pool we headed back for ojitos and a red snapper each for dinner.

On our second day in Vinales we went to sort out our cash situation. For those who dont know (including us at the time) the US trade embargo means that any transaction from Cuba to go through an American bank is automatically declined. As we found out this meant all but one of our cards would provide funds for the next few days, we were now working on a very strict budget! Not letting that stop us we had the biggest and sweetest lobster ever nd went out to hear some more live music which was bliss apart from Lisa's dodgy tummy.

The next day we booked some trips and went to visit some caves. The cave system near Vinales is around 46km long set over 7 levels, only two levels are open to the public but with a guide, helmet, head torch and grippy shoes you can explore for a good 2 hours. Our guide was very knowledgable with some basic English, although his major talent was playing music on stalactites. We saw little frogs, massive spiders and some incredible caves. The whole thing was a bit like a video game with the path swirling around and dipping in and out of ditches in the pitch black. One of our favourite caving experiences of all time.

Later we headed out on a tourist bus to check out some other caves which we full of tourists and guides and had static lighting and flat floors, not nearly as exciting. However they did have raw cane suger to drink (quite refreshing and unsurprisingly sweet) and as a treat at the end a buffalo to have a ride on, which Mike promptly did "yee haa".

Time for a Mojito in Habana

In Cuba we headed straight into Havana, having managed to get some money out on our credit card (more on this later) we found a casa familia to stay at and headed out for some live music and a mojito. Walking between a few different bars we soon found that live music can be found everywhere. The bands playing were excellent, however if you stayed around long enough you did start to realise that they were playing a set number of "tourist hits". Still good to listen to.

After talking to some musicians we went in search of some more music and dancing only to bump into Alexander - a Cuban music teacher. Lisa initially thought he was a taxi driver thanks to his classic car, but even though he wasn't he was happy to give us a lift to a very reasonably priced cabaret show. After plenty of beers, scantily clad dancing girls and live music we had a good insight into the real Cuba from our new friend. At the end of the night he was such a good friend that he offered to let Mike drive his car (given to him by his father many years ago) back to our place to drop us off. With only 3 gears and rusty old brakes it was about 30 seconds before control was headed back to someone sober and Cuban.

The next day was started with very salty omelettes and a trip on the tourist buses to Vinales in the North West of Cuba...

A quick dip in Mexico

Running straight out of Belize City we took a bus to Cancun in Mexico. Changing bus at the border, Mikee got the red light & so had his bags checked - thank God we didn't take up that offer of taking in illegal documents to help the Cuban people smuggler!

We only had 12 hours in Cancun & so literally only got to see a McDonalds & a hotel room, before getting our flight out to Cuba.

Caye Caulker and a close encounter with the Blue Hole

Leaving the luxury of Ambergris we took the water taxi to Caye Caulker. The laid back cousin of the other Cayes had more in common with Jamaica than Belize. Lisa managed to puncture her foot on some coral leading to a few days of hobbling around the Island, luckily only 5km long and 100m wide.

Unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse and the rain started to fall, flooding the roads and hammering on the roof of our beachfront hut at night. Undetered we booked a trip to the Blue Hole (one of the most famous dives in the world). Waking at 5am to walk to the dive shop we had little hope of diving (it rained all night), but the early morning walk gained us a new friend, who followed us to the dive shop and then back to out hut, where he fell asleep on our door step (he was quite cute though).