Wednesday March 11, 2009

After work, I picked Lynda up and we headed off to Toronto, after stopping at Siem Reap (or Seam Rip, as Paul calls it) in Kingston for supper. Lynda was in charge of all the non-driving related car dials, such as the heater, mp3 player, ceiling light, and seat adjustments. At one point I was scowled at for overstepping my bounds when I infringed on her territory and changed the radio station. In retaliation, as a punishment, she put the left turn indicator on.

We arrived at the Belaire Hotel at 10:00. For $97.00 they provided us with 2 weeks parking (we only needed a week), a nice room and a free shuttle back and forth to the airport. We celebrated our vacation in our room with some mini bottles of Bailey's that Lynda brought along. Already I was congratulating myself on my choice of travel partner. We wasted no time in going to sleep as we had an early day coming up. I set my alarm, the hotel alarm and asked for a wake-up call, so we were covered.

Thursday March 12, 2009

At 3:00 a.m. both alarms went off at once along with the phone ringing for our wake up call. By 4:00am we were in the lobby with our bags and whisked off to the Toronto Pearson Airport. Our Sunquest plane left half an hour late at 7:00 a.m. Great flight, good food and poor movie. We had requested a window seat and were given one at the Emergency Exit. We were given a special briefing and told that we were in charge of the safety of all the passengers in the even of an emergency. The passengers were not aware of how lucky they were to have two responsible experts such as Lynda and I, on their side. As a bonus, we had extra leg room…however, it came at a price as our seats were non-reclining. We were also treated to a champagne breakfast. I was busy rummaging in my carry-on bag when our champagne arrived.

"Man that's good champagne", said Lynda with a big smile.

"Hey…where's mine?", I said looking around in a panic as Lynda continued smiling.

We arrived in Cuba's Santiago City around 10:15. Lynda went through customs first and tried to hide from me behind a pillar before going through the x-ray. She was reprimanded by a security guard who thought she was trying to sneak through. We took the one hour shuttle bus through the twisting mountainous road to the Club Amigo Carisol Los Corales resort. We had booked the trip through Odyssey Travel in Kingston for $855 each. Along the route, Lynda pointed out what she called "sheepgoats" and insisted that the tour guide's name was "Anthill", although I believe it was actually "Angel".

That's nothing...you should see the rest of the bush!

At the resort, we were very quickly booked in and taken to room 224 in the Los Corales area. There are actually two hotels about ½ a kilometer apart. We had the option of using both hotels and all restaurants. Our room was quite nice and clean. We got settled in then headed off to the "El Colibri" buffet restaurant. The food was pretty good and plentiful, however we found we had to continually fight for plates and cutlery. Also, you had to be pretty fast to get the fresh squeezed orange juice as it disappeared quite quickly. Service was almost non-existent at this buffet and it was almost impossible to get a waiter. Fortunately, Lynda and I were a lot alike and we found all this amusing rather than irritating. It actually made the vacation more interesting. I had my own cat that sat beside me and ate table scraps. Scabby, the cat had large open sores on both sides of her neck but was very nice. Another interesting feature of this resort was the lack of gardeners. Instead, they allowed herds of goats and horses to roam free to keep the vegetation down. It wasn't uncommon to be swimming in the pool and have a herd of goats run by. The only downfall, was that you had to watch where you stepped.  Another odd feature of this resort was that the staff drank while on the job.

Lunch being over, we decided to hit the beach. The actual swimming area is quite small…maybe 200 feet of beach. The rest is all hard coral. Lynda and I were floating around getting our bearings. There was an attractive young woman about 25 snorkeling beside us, and 3 similarly aged male friends snorkeling a little ways away. One of them yelled to her, "Did you see the sea snake"? She pointed directly at me and said, "Yeah…it's in that guy's pants!!" I was speechless. There was not much I could do, but curtsy and bow to the crowd. After a bit of tanning, we walked about a kilometer to the left. There is another beach there that the locals use. One area is full of spiny sea urchins. We began to explore to the right but were thwarted by a security guard who wouldn't let us by, as he thought we were going to swim. Once I told him we were just on a photo expedition, he let us pass. I believe he may have been assigned to us as he seemed to pop up everywhere we went during our seven day stay.

Lynda was fond of showing off her legs

We went to the buffet for supper. Lynda took the last of the orange juice so I didn't get any. Later, we went to the outdoor stage for the entertainment hour. Tonight was a "guess the artist" music contest. I guessed the Bee Gees on one song and was asked my name. I yelled, "Daveed" giving the Spanish version. Lynda looked puzzled as she thought I had said "Sahib". The Emcee was also puzzled as he couldn't make out what I was saying. It was a little cool tonight so I borrowed a blanket from our room and we wrapped up in it while we watched the rest of the show.

We tied playing two games of ping pong. Tomorrow will be the rubber match..

Friday March 13, 2009

Got up and had cold showers as there was no hot water today. We had a great omelette at yesterday's buffet restaurant…although we did have to share a plate. It was a struggle, but we managed to entice a waiter over to our table. Lynda asked for a coffee. Apparently there were no mugs left as she received it in a cereal bowl. The waiter tried to sell us some cigars but we weren't interested. He was persistent however, and I finally agreed to have a look at them if he brought them in tomorrow.

I should mention that Lynda is like my clone…on drugs. She's a practical joker, so I really had to watch my back. We share the same type of humour (which is pretty scary).

After breakfast we did some snorkeling. I made sure first, to check my snorkel for chili peppers. I wasn't going to fall for that one again. It's fairly shallow but there are some areas where it deepens with a lot of coral formations and interesting fish.  

Later, we hiked off to the left again and discovered a little park on the opposite side of the highway, filled with some very well done Mayan replicas. Quite an interesting area. We continued along the road for about another mile then came back along the coral beachfront. Fairly hard walking in sandals.

When we returned we decided to have lunch at the Pasodoble buffet at the other resort. It was actually much better and they actually had service. The waiters and waitresses were very attentive. We decided this was our buffet of preference. We were serenaded by a great trio. The electric guitar player was blind and very good.

It was a rough life for me in Cuba

Tonight they had dancers for the outdoor entertainment. I went to the "Daiquiri Bar" to get us a couple of daiquiris. They had none. Actually, the "Daiquiri Bar" never had daiquiris the whole time we were there? We did manage to get some at the other bars, however. Later we headed over to the Disco which doubled as the beach grill in the daytime. We danced a few songs but found most of the tunes were difficult to dance to Lynda's copyrighted dog paddle dance. It's a very unique dance step which takes years of training to master.

Back at our room, I brought out my finger traps and tried them out on Lynda. They are cardboard tubes. You insert a finger from each hand and then you can't get them out. It was amusing for a while.

"I don't know what to do with the rest of them", I said.

"We could put them on the blind guitar player", suggested Lynda.

I filled Lynda's sneakers full of shaving cream and went to bed.

Saturday March 14, 2009

No hot water again this morning. We went to the Carisol Resort for their breakfast buffet. Very good. They make great omelettes.

We tripped our way down to the beach. All the sidewalks seem to have built in optical illusions so that you don't see any of the steps. It's a real back cruncher. We took out the large paddleboat and had a good time surfing the waves. It worked quite well. Went for another snorkel. Lynda used a disposable underwater camera and I used my digital in a sort of sealed baggie that I purchased. It worked quite well. I stepped on a sea urchin. "Funny, but it wasn't there a second ago", I thought as I looked accusingly at Lynda. She denied any responsibility however, and eventually I gave her the benefit of the doubt, although I still wonder…after all, my cheese doodles had disappeared the night before and I'm quite sure the maid didn't take them.

After filling up our water bottles with strawberry daiquiris, we went for a hike to the right. We explored the beach disco, which had been demolished in the last hurricane then followed the coral cliffs along the shore for about a kilometer. There are all kinds of little coral pools that fill up like bathtubs as the waves come in. We used one of them just for that purpose. Lynda remarked that she had never seen so many shoes washed up on a beach before and wondered if a "shoe boat" had sunk nearby.

I talked Lynda into taking the complimentary SCUBA lesson in the pool. Since I had nothing to do, I took it as well as a refresher. She did very well and we had a good time swimming around the pool with all the equipment. After 20 minutes in the pool, Lynda was now Cuba SCUBA certified to go on an ocean dive. That seemed safe and fair, since it took me 3 weeks of extensive training to get my SCUBA certificate.

We retired to our room to relax and then raced back to the other resort for supper. Another good one! I tend to like the food as they have all the key ingredients - all you can eat and free!

As a surprise, we ran into Lynda's friend from Kingston, Rowan, so we had drinks with her by the pool. Tonight's entertainment was synchronized swimming. We watched that and it gave Lynda and I some ideas of things we wanted to try in the pool. We headed over to the lounge where they had an old out of tune piano. I practiced my band songs while Lynda fawned over me by laying on the top of the piano. In the background, I had a little groupie girl dancing to my tunes.

My foot was still tingling from my sea urchin encounter. We went to bed early. Lynda had short-sheeted the bed.

Sunday March 15, 2009

We raced around to make it to the Dive Centre for 9:00 to sign up for our SCUBA excursion. The price was 49 Convertible Cuban Pesos for Lynda and 35 CUC for me as I had a certificate. We had only brought 80 altogether but were able to talk them into accepting that - it just meant that Lynda wouldn't get any air in her tank - ha, ha. By the time, they arrived and we were suited up etc., it was around 10:30. About 7 of us piled into their motorboat and were driven down the coast to the right, where we anchored just in front of the Dolphin Aquarium. We almost ran over some snorkelers on the way. Lynda was a little wary about going overboard in the diver's style (backwards somersault). She was the first to go and was told to make sure she didn't take her mouthpiece out. She did an excellent job but once she realized she had mastered the entry, she was so excited she removed her mouthpiece to give a cheer and got a mouthful of seawater. She started choking and drifting away. I was unable to help as I was half suited up. It reminded me of the song "Shannon".

Lynda is gone

She's drifting out to sea

She always loved to swim away

Maybe she'll find an island

With a shady tree

Just like the one in our backyard

While I hummed that pleasing tune in my head, the divemaster took charge, dove overboard and rescued her. Until then, I had thought of joining the more experienced divers who swam over to a wreck. This was at 75 feet compared to the 50 feet we would be going to. However, I thought it might be wiser to stick with Lynda and see what kind of antics she would be up to. I was a little wary as historically, me, water and others, don't always have happy endings.

Carmen Miranda thought, "If cucumbers are good for the eyes, then..."

The divemaster did an excellent job of taking Lynda down. He stuck with her all the way to the bottom until she felt comfortable…at which time, she began to lead our group - much to his dismay. She led us on a whirlwind tour of the ocean floor where we saw all kinds of coral and multi-coloured fish. At one point, with the divemaster lagging far behind we all heard a clicking noise. It was him, banging his flashlight on his forehead pleading for us to return as he'd found a mantaray. I chased after Lynda and dragged her back to see it. All in all it was a great tour. I overheard the divemaster telling the boat captain in Spanish how impressed he was with Lynda's first dive. Best of all, there were no major events…unless you count Lynda going deaf in one ear. Permanence has yet to be determined. She tells me that there is a bright side to this though, as she now only listens to half of what I say.

After lunch we loaded up our water bottles with the liquor of the day and found a private little cove to the right where there were already two reclining chairs waiting for us. We read, snorkelled and tanned. When Lynda wasn't looking, I undid her bikini and tied one end of the strap to the chair. Unfortunately she discovered this before the hiking group dropped by to ask if she could get up and take their photo. We spent a very relaxing afternoon.

Back at the resort, it was time to play ping pong. Unfortunately, someone had broken one of the paddles so we were out of luck. Luckily, there is another set at the other resort but we decided to stay and watch the magic show, which was actually pretty good. After the show, it was time for a romantic stumble down the unlit path to the beach. At one point, Lynda yelled "Step!!" which was our cue that there was a huge step downwards which is very helpful to me as I have tunnel vision. I made the adjustment and prepared for the big drop. There was none. I crunched my back and almost fell over as Lynda ran off into the darkness, chortling with delight.

Back at the hotel, just before bedtime, Lynda carefully checked the toilet seat for crazy glue.

Monday March 16, 2009

We got up at 6:30, grabbed breakfast and just barely made it for our 8:00 bus to the city of Santiago. As a matter of fact, everyone was impatiently waiting for us on the bus. We toured the Fortaleza Morro which is an architecturally fascinating and scenic, old Spanish fort. Lynda and I managed to get some fairly unique pictures there. Next stop was La Moncada, the yellow barracks attacked by Fidel Castro in which you can still see many bullet holes. Also, we thought we were touring the Ron Bacardi distillery but it was just a store beside the warehouse - although they did provide us with some samples of rum. I made the mistake of asking Lynda to hold mine while I got her picture. Strangely enough, when I got it back, it was empty. Also saw Loma de San Juan where Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders stormed the hill and defeated the Spanish troops. We were allowed an hour at the market square so we raced around and we had drinks on the top of a large hotel. Lynda had a beer. I set up the timer to take our picture.

Everytime I turned my back, Lynda would sign up for another tour

"That's the best lemonade I've ever had", said Lynda.

"Hey…where's my lemonade?", I said looking around.

Upon returning to our lodge, we ate at the buffet then went snorkeling and fell asleep in our lawn chairs on the beach. For some variety, we walked to the Cuban beach on the left and then back to our room for a siesta.

As usual, we almost missed supper at the Carisol buffet. We got there in time to hear the last two sets of a really good band. They had a xylophone, guitar, accordion, bongos and the main instrument was a saxophone. They played traditional Cuban music such as "Hotel California". They were excellent. I requested "El Cuarto de Tula", my favourite Cuban song.

There were no daiquiris at the Daiquiri bar but they had excellent cappuccinos tonight. We sipped on them while watching the International Show. They did a good job with that one. Near the end, a very elderly German gentleman walked up to the stage wearing only his white underwear. We thought it was part of the act. He was yelling at the Emcee, "turn it down…I can't sleep!" The Emcee kept telling him to go and put some clothes on. They argued back and forth for several minutes. It was the best part of the show.

Underwear Man

Tuesday March 17, 2009

We had nothing planned this morning so we actually got to sleep in…almost like we were on vacation. I wore my St. Patrick's Day hat all day. Lynda gave me a green fridge magnet and I gave her some chocolates, which I helped eat. We ate breakfast at the Corales buffet.

"Man, that was one good bowl of coffee!", said Lynda.

Our cigar waiter was annoyed at us and asked where we'd been. Then he slipped a box of 25 cigars into my packsack and said we could pay him later. We admired his sales technique so we ended up buying them.

Went back to the beach for some snorkeling and then to the Beach Grill bar for lunch - really good hamburgers. Fabio joined us as well.  He's Lynda's inflatable man and fills in when I'm unavailable.  The waitress got a good laugh at him...not to mention our maid.  Lynda usually left him in our room in some compromising position.  Finally got our free catamaran ride although it wasn't too thrilling as it wasn't very windy today. I played a couple of games of volleyball. I discovered that it was unwise to dive for the ball as the sand was quite rough. I ended up with scabby knees.

We followed the sidewalk over to the other resort and swam over to the swim-up bar for some pina coladas. We joined the ping pong tournament. There was an older gentleman there who was pretty good. Lynda gave him a good run for his money. He had to resort to side slashing and putting spins on the ball, to win. We lost the tournament. Later I challenged Lynda to 3 games. I was winning until she resorted to trickery. I didn't have my rulebook but felt that there was probably some rule against your opponent flashing you.

Back at our resort, we borrowed their pool to practice our synchronized swimming. Once again we were unsuccessful in getting on top of each other's shoulders. Perhaps if we'd put our pina coladas down first. And then it was siesta time. I like siesta time.

Lynda also brought along a candy bra made out of hundreds of little candy's.  I wasn't allowed to do any sampling as she was afraid I would have a sugar high. She decided to give it to our maid as a present.  The maid was quite embarrassed....especially when Lynda made her try it on.  After that, the maid saw Lynda in an entirely different light.  An hour later, the maid was back with a bottle of personal lubricant that one of the guests had left behind.  She wanted to know what it was for.  Even I was embarrassed at Lynda's graphical and visual explanation...and moreso when I was used as part of the demonstration.  After that, word got around and all the maids came to Lynda at all hours for advice.  With her new celebrity status, she was given the title of "Dr. Lynda".

Tonight we followed the electrically lit path back to the Carisol buffet for supper. There was no band tonight so we ate outside and had very good service and food. We even had ice cream tonight. Then we walked back to our resort for the "comedy night". Lynda beat me at two games of Uno before Act I started. After two of their extremely lame "comedy" skits, Lynda said, "I'm going to have to have at least three beer to get through this". I brought her three beer. It wasn't enough. I went back to get three more but was told they couldn't serve me. I thought I'd been cut off by the drunk bartender, but it turned out they were out of plastic cups. Luckily, Lynda still had her cups so they washed those and we were able to suffer through the rest of the production. After, we wandered around the resort trying to unwind while eluding our bodyguard. Got to bed at midnight.

Arch Enemy

Arch Angel

Arch ie Andrews

Wednesday March 18, 2009

Got up…eventually, then raced to catch the last of the breakfast. Since we were late, we elected to eat at the inferior Corales Buffet. Scabby the cat, was there to greet me. After our bowl of coffee, we filled up our bottles with daiquiris and took a three hour walk through the mountains. Apparently there was a tour, but we decided to make our own way. On one out of the way trail, a young but hefty Cuban girl came running by us with a new packsack. I thought perhaps she was jogging but Lynda came up with a better scenario. Since it was about 95 degrees, she thought that she had just stolen the packsack. High up in the mountains we ran into another young Cuban who tried to tell us it was dangerous to be up here because we were only 15 km from Guantanamo Bay. Being experts on the area, we ignored him and continued on. A mother sent her 3 young children to come out and welcome us and beg for gifts. We hadn't brought anything but we did have a few stray coins. Eskimio, Meecha and Weehula were delightful little children. Nudelo ran around naked waving an old belt in the air. Meecha wanted us to adopt her. Lynda sneezed on her just before we left. We heard later, the entire village was decimated.

When we arrived back at our room, the maids were just finishing up making our beds...while drinking beer.  Later, I thought Lynda was in the bathroom. There was a knock on the outside door. It was her. I did a double take, which was what she was after. As usual, we had a siesta then hit the beach again. During today's snorkeling tour, we lost track of where we were. At one point, I noticed that it seemed to be getting deeper and that there seemed to be a current pulling us along. I surfaced to find that we had somehow gone though the coral channel and were now out in the main ocean. We had been warned of rip tides, so I suggested we head back in. Lynda was reluctant but I thought it would be best since, historically speaking, I sometimes get into a little bit of trouble around water.

We headed to the Beach Grill as we both had a hankering for hamburgers. Of course, there were none today so we just had two large plates of fries. During our meal, the waiter came over and said he needed to take our table to fix the legs. Being polite Canadians, we complied and relinquished our table. It was difficult standing in the middle of the restaurant holding our plates, eating and sipping our beers.

Day Sippers

We pretty much have a routine, which involves swimming, drinking and eating. Today was no exception. We swam some more then went to the Carisol swim up bar for pina coladas. I made sure Lynda had a few more than me, then I challenged her to another game of ping pong. She still won 2/3.

Returned to our room for another siesta. We had to really rush to make our 7:30 a la carte reservation at the Carisol Italian spaghetti supper at the Jardines bar. It was very good. From there we walked back to our hotel and had a glass of wine at the El Colibri bar while being serenaded by two guys with guitars. Lynda had a secret laugh at me all night as earlier, we had taken pictures of each other with red flowers in our ears. I had forgotten to remove mine.

We went to the "Cuban show". I "bought" Lynda three more beers so she could get through it. It was very poor. We went for a walk on the beach. As usual, our bodyguard kept popping up. We danced outside the disco in the palm trees and then laid out on the beach in lawn chairs and watched the stars. Lynda was a bit giggly and wanted to swim in the pool which had closed several hours earlier. Of course, our bodyguard showed up at that time. We retired to our room where I had to give Lynda a massage as my punishment for losing the ping pong tournament.

Thursday March 19, 2009

My alarm went off at 6:30. Check out today was at the reasonable time of 6:40 a.m. We rushed around packing, as our bus would be leaving at 7:40. At 7:00 the manager sent someone to see where we were. We still managed to sneak in a quick breakfast and a last bowl of coffee. We bid a fond farewell to our resort and took our bus to Santiago.

"Good bye Dr. Lynda," chorused the maids.

Our plane didn't leave until noon so we amused ourselves by keeping an eye on a candy bar wrapper in the middle of the floor. Mr. Bill (as we called him) was trying to make it to the far side of the floor where he had planned to smuggle himself into a suitcase and catch a ride to Toronto. We cringed as someone dropped a suitcase on him and once when he was viciously kicked. Finally, he made it to his destination and then…a guy bent over, scooped him up and tossed him in the trash. I can still hear his screams…

Once again, we requested and got the emergency seat. The clerk had a great time making fun of my name. He looked both of us, laughed and said, "Workman and Workwoman". Then he laughed uproariously. This time, they placed the second largest man on the plane, in the seat with us. He wasn't quite as large as Goiterman but he was large. Just before he dosed off, he mentioned that he might snore a little. Moments later, he proved it. At the time, I thought the plane was going down, but it was just him.

Sunwing rules the skies…we had good food, good flight and good movie - "Madagascar II". We arrived in Toronto at 3:20 and handed in our declaration forms.

The custom agent looked at them and said to Lynda, "Tell me about your purchases". Lynda said, "Well, we each got a little wooden shoe…"

"Stop right there…", replied the customs agent, "Already there's a discrepancy".

Apparently neither of us had checked off that we had bought a wooden object. The agent told us we would each be fined $800.00. After she'd had her fun scaring us, she finally said she would let us off with a warning this time. After all that, they never even looked at our purchases….or our wooden cigar box (another wooden object we'd forgotten about).

I called the Belaire Hotel for our pickup. I had trouble understanding the Chinese clerk.

"What did they say?" asked Lynda.

"Well…I couldn't quite make it out. I think she said they were sending 'Purple Wren'. I think that may be the name of the driver. I don't know why she felt I need to know that." Hopefully they aren't sending a real purple wren to pick us up", I said.

"Perhaps what she meant was that she was sending a purple van", said Lynda rolling her eyes.

"Hmmm", I replied, "that's another possibility, although a little far-fetched.

I kept my eyes skyward searching for purple wrens but it turned out Lynda was right.

I drove us home from Toronto. To keep me from falling asleep, Lynda had me serenade her with my harmonica. Then she gave me a quiz on New York from a trivia book I had.

"What's the name of the famous New York Stadium", asked Lynda.

"Shea Stadium?", I replied.

"Noooo…", said Lynda.

"I don't know then", I said.

"I'll give you a clue", she said and proceeded to hum a song.

"I got it…Yankee Doodle Stadium…I've never heard of it though", I said.

"It's Yankee Stadium", retorted Lynda in exasperation.

We moved on to playing 21 and then Indian Poker. I had a few strange looks from passing cars when they spotted various face cards on my forehead. Finally we arrived in Kingston and had the rib special at RAXX.

All in all, it had been an excellent holiday with the perfect traveling companion. It had all gone perfectly without a hitch.

"Goodnight Lynda", I said.

"Eh…What…I can't hear out of that ear", she replied.


Click the link below to see a slide show of the trip

PHOTOS







View My Stats