We really enjoyed our vacation in Cuba. The hotel was on a beautiful stretch of beach, wide and sandy...one of the better stretches of beach on the Varedero Peninsula. Some of the beach was very rocky (very sharp jagged rocks) and in other places the sand was very coarse an full of broken shells and in other places it was very narrow not even wide enough for a beach chair. But over all most of the beach was nice. We did alot of walking on the waters edge.
But our vacation wasn't all sandy beaches and rum punch...we did take a couple of trips. We spent a day in Havana with a bus tour. Old Havana has incredible potential to be stunningly beautiful...full of old Spanish architecture. Unfortunately the buildings are suffering from years of neglect and lack of funds and materials to restore them, though some efforts are currently underway thanks to some funding from UNICEF (Old Havana has been declared a heritage site). One other thing that struck us about Havana, was how clean it was. Very little trash around, actually this was true for most of the places we went. And considering the number of tourists, hardly any beggars (saw 2 for the whole two weeks). However, everyone was looking for a buck in other ways. Going into a public toilet?, better have a roll of TP in your bag or prepare to fork out a buck for a lady to pull a few sheets off a roll for you! How about a buck for the nice bus driver (no matter how short the trip was).
We also took an adventurous trip to Cayo Largo, a small island (part of Cuba) just off the south coast. Because of the distance, we had to fly over. The plane was from 1954, was Russian (all the dials in the cockpit were in Russian), held 10 passengers, and was a prop driven Bi-Plane! Just after we took off the co-pilot came out of the cockpit (there was no door) and offered one by one the opportunity to sit in the cockpit, a few people actually were given control of the plane...Mark got to fly the plane for a few minutes. For the benefit of the rest of the passengers the "flight attendant/bartender" opened the window in the door so we could video and shoot photos through it! I think every FAA safety rule was broken on that flight! Once we actually got to the island, we spent sometime on Iguana Island. Its an island nature reserve for a huge colony of Iguanas. Had to really watch your step, the things were Everywhere!! We also got to spend some time on the beach...and what a beach!!! The sand was SO soft and white, it was like walking on powdered sugar!
We met several nice couples from Canada (all from Ontario). Had fun hanging out with them. It was a real challenge to find English speaking non-smokers! The amount of smoking was the only thing that turned us off a bit. There was Alot! Our first indication was right in the airport waiting to clear customs. As if standing in line for an hour wondering what it was going to be like to be scrutinized by Communist custom agents, add about 300 chain smoking airline passengers that have had to refrain for about the last 4 hours! Blech!!
We did a few other small excursions while we were there. As part of our package we got a bus and boat tour of the Caminar River. That was very nice. But surprising how little wild life the is in Cuba. Basically lots of Turkey Vultures, a few other species of birds and little else. They do have there own species of Crocodiles, but we only saw those in the little "zoo" that we stopped at on another trip. There is a large coral reef surrounding most of Cuba and because it is a National park the corals and fish have been allowed to flourish. There are several varieties of corals and lots of different kinds of fish.
I think we got out money's worth out of our all-inclusive package. We certainly drank our shares of rum punch, Cuba Libre (rum, coke and lime juice), slushies with schnapps, Mojitos (pronounced moe-hee-to which were sugar and lime juice mixed with a sprig of mint (crushing the mint a bit) then topped with soda water and rum), Superclubs (separated layers of Curacao, grenadine and OJ), cappuccinos and ice cream! The ice cream was Fantastic!!! And as pretty much the only source of calcium that you could pretty much rely on being properly stored all the time, well, we needed to consume it several times a day! (That's our story and we're sticking to it!) The rest of the food was sometimes a mystery. Usually pretty good and a good variety. Not everything was labeled so we had to guess what it was. Sometimes even when it was labeled you couldn't be sure that's what you were scooping onto your plate. One night there was something labeled chicken that looked like no part of a chicken that I'd ever seen before. Not an adventure for the picky eater! After awhile though we actually got used to it and started looking forward to certain things.
Anyways, we had a great time. Came back relaxed and tanned and ready to turn right back around and go back!