Cuba - Day 2 - The Tide has Turned

After a good night of sleep, I was the first into the shower.  I was mentally prepared that it would probably be a cold trickle.  Wasn't I surprised to have a fairly well pressurized hot shower!!!  Of course in the middle of it, the power went out and I stood there in the pitch black yelling for Damon to get a flashlight, which thank goodness we brought.   Power was back within 5-10 minutes and all was good.  We were provided with a grand total of two towels, each only slightly larger than a hand towel – but they got the job done.

We had asked to include breakfast, so at the designated time, our host and his mother came over to cook us breakfast for 10 CUC.  The mother had two bags of stuff from which she was able to whip up the most amazing breakfast.  In one tiny little frying pan, she made fried eggs, fried plantains, fried tomatoes, and toast. 

Yes, she made toast in a frying pan.  Plus amazing Cuban coffee, fresh squeezed papaya juice, sliced cheese and fresh pineapple.

Again, they took huge pride in being able to put on such a nice spread – we couldn’t come close to finishing it all.  Our host chatted with us in moderately decent English - he said they all had heard of Chicago as the Windy City!

I said to Damon this morning that having been here for only 24 hours, I already feel guilty about the level of waste we as typical Americans tend to generate.  Here, there isn't much so you don't use much.  Again, the toilet paper.  I needed to blow my nose last night but didn't want to waste the toilet paper.  I also realized just how much I rely on paper towels and napkins - they just don't have access here.  So many times I went to reach for a napkin or toilet paper or a paper towel and realized that I couldn’t.  We definitely made good use of our little bath towels.  Maybe the only exception to waste is bottled water, which there is in abundance.  We cannot drink the water so we are always on the lookout for bottled water.  Luckily I brought a camelback and filled in in the airport so we have a decent supply of cheap teeth brushing water which we ration in little cups.

After breakfast, we needed a taxi to get to our next Casa.  Our host said he would call his friend who had a taxi - everyone in Havana has a friend who does something to make money!  So the friend shows up in a "car" - and I use the word car lightly because it was more of a prehistoric shell of what may have once been a car.  The car doors had no internal panels - basically just the outside metal - you could see the entire window go up and down.  Somehow the window roller survived. 

The floor of the car had some holes - small - but you could see the ground.   Our host asked if we would mind if he came, too - of course not!  It seems as though the locals take advantage of taxi rides when they can get them as there always seems to be extra people in the cars with us.  And off we went in the Flintstone mobile.  We dropped off our host a few minutes later and kept going.

When we got to our second Casa in the neighborhood of Vedado, we found a beautifully restored Colonial house that was absolutely HUGE; of course, we were greeted by a locked gate. We forgot to take a picture, so I found this stock photo.

We were a few hours early and no one was expecting us.  We basically stood there looking like idiots until the housekeeper finally noticed and let us in.  Our room “the Red Room” was fantastic!  It had a tiny little living room and kitchen with a mini fridge, bar and bar stools, bottled water (yay)

and then a staircase up to a bedroom with a giant bed and full bathroom – unfortunately for Damon, the bathroom ceiling height was only about 6’2.  Damon is 6’4”. 

Everything was new, clean and comfortable and we had normal sized bath towels, a FULL roll of toilet paper (but no obvious spares), shampoo, soap and a hand towel.  What???  It's the freaking Four Seasons!  All of this for $40 per night.

After settling in, we left to check out the neighborhood - it was raining.  Oh well.  We just got wet.  We found a giant marble monument in the middle of a huge roundabout that looked interesting so we climbed up a bunch of steps it to check it out and get some shelter. 

I have no idea what it was as nothing is really marked with informational plaques.  Damon got up the stairs first and warned me not to come up, but it was raining and I wanted a shelter.  Sadly, upon further exploration this massive marble monument seemed to be some sort of  makeshift toilet and had human poop all over, I have dubbed it the Poop Palace.  It does make a great reference point since it is easy to find our Casa once we find the Palace.  Yes, a little gross, but we are just taking it all in in stride.  We left the Poop Palace to find a taxi to take us to "Havana Vieja" or, Old Havana – this is the main tourist area that we had discovered last night (albeit we had just hit the edge of it).  We hailed a taxi, which, not surprisingly had a random person along for the ride. This time we only paid 10 CUC for the ride.  We are getting better as the Coco cab set us back 12 CUC the night before – but since it was raining, I opted not to further hone my negotiation skills.  We headed for the Museo de Revolucion (Revolution Museum), and waited in line for a few minutes but eventually gave up since nothing was moving (NOTE:  don’t go to museums on Tuesdays when the cruise ships arrive).  We started wandering and found a place for lunch - it had motorcycles lined up in front and Damon got all excited, so we had to go in.

We ate a great (huge) lunch - lobster for 14 CUC and an awesome grilled chicken sandwich for 3 CUC.  And an enormous strawberry mojito that made me stagger a bit on the way out.

And here is where things started to turn around in a big way.  Old Havana is absolutely amazing.  Tiny tiny streets - maybe the width of one car.  Most streets are cobblestone.  If you've ever been to the French quarter in New Orleans, just squish it even closer together and that is old Havana. In searching our pictures, I cannot find any good pictures of the streets - at least ones where I'm not walking through the middle with a goofy look on my face, so you'll have to take my word for how awesome it was.

Every now and then the streets will open to a giant square or park with monuments or churches or hotels or cafes. 

Our favorite plaza had a giant bronze statue of a naked lady in high heels riding a chicken while holding a giant fork.  The only explanation we got was that it was a famous Cuban artist who always does something with chickens.

We just walked the streets for several hours with no plan - if something looked interesting, we just went there, definitely my favorite place so far. 

The buildings lining the streets are wall to wall with no space between and so many of them are painted in bright and pastel colors.  It is hard to tell if they are occupied or not but many seem to be residences.  Many of the doorways are open and people stand at the base of the stairway and sell souvenirs that are hung up and down the staircase.  Some have pizza or other food, or water, or ice cream or computer repair or haircuts. 

Everyone is trying to sell something from the bottom of their staircases.  You look in some buildings and there is just debris and the next one has someone watching tv.  Very hard to visualize without seeing it.  While many of the buildings in Old Havana are being renovated or have been renovated, there is still a huge number of buildings falling down in disrepair and it changes from one block to the next.  The “main” drag (Obispo Street) is the most rehabbed and most buildings are rehabbed.  The farther you get from where the tourists frequent, and the more residential a street might be, the more run down it is likely to be.  Amazingly, whether it was day or night, or whether the streets were crowded or empty, there was never a moment that we felt unsafe – despite how run down an area looked.

We did walk in and out of a cafes and restaurants, usually because I had to go to the bathroom; plus, we drank coffee like 5x a day since they are mainly just little shots. 

Damon was especially taken with a place called O’Reilly’s Café on O’Reilly Street. 

I would love to have seen the owner – a red-headed Cuban?  It was a cute coffee shop/restaurant with a nice bathroom upstairs (lady out front, no toilet paper).  Oh, and another funny thing about the restaurants – while mojitos and beer are common, it is also possible to get pop – occasionally you see Coke or Pepsi, but mainly they have two types of pop – “TuKola” (Coke) and a green can (I never caught the name) that is “7-up”.  And, get this – they have Red Bull.  Red Bull was stocked in every refrigerated case I saw.  How strange is that??  We found this little bread shop/bakery and went to check it out – as was typical, the cases were about 80% empty, but we saw frosted brownies.  For $.40 each.  They were delicious.

There are four forts lining the entry into Havana’s harbor that were built to protect the city, which was a major port for pretty much everything coming and going anywhere.  Damon and I consider ourselves experts as we have been watching Black Sails about pirates in Nassau & Cuba around this time.  We did tour one of the forts which was back a bit from the mouth of the ocean – they had some pirate history and some fake treasure; but since everything is typically written in Spanish, we couldn’t really figure much out.

We wanted to hire a convertible “classic car” for the next day but didn’t know how to go about it.  As we were walking, I happened to catch the eye of a guy driving a turquoise and white convertible ’51 Chevy.  He saw me looking and stopped in the middle of the street and waited for us to walk over – and that was how we met Yasiel.  Our only requirements had been – convertible, old car, and speaks English.  I swapped out English for “he was really cute”.  In broken Spanglish, we gave him our address and the time to pick us up the next day and I was pretty sure we negotiated a price for 4 hours of taking us to all of the popular sites.  Only time would tell.

Thoroughly pleased with ourselves for making plans for the following day, we made our way to a restaurant for dinner and in another interesting bathroom experience, the hand soap there was from Bath & Body Works “Dark Kiss” – I wondered whether they have black market foaming hand soap, or if tourists just leave things and they use what they can find.  Given that this restaurant had a famous chef, I’m guessing it was black market.  One other quirky thing we noticed in restaurants – they may not provide napkins, but we regularly got a little shaker of toothpicks.  Sort of like a round tic-tac container where you turn it over and shake until one toothpick falls out of a little hole.  What they have in abundance can be strange.  We left the restaurant in search of more dessert.  People warned us that the food was mediocre at best.  We have been really enjoyed every restaurant and bakery we have found so far.  Old Havana at night is a lot of live music both in restaurants and on the street.  We found our dulces and eventually headed home exhausted.  Note – taxi negotiation skills improving… only paid $8 to get home vs $12 from the same taxi stand the night before!!!

A few post scripts from the day…

We weren’t sure how easy it would be to find people who speak English.  I would say most people spoke as much English as we spoke Spanish – which was not much.  Luckily, we had downloaded a translator before leaving which saved us regularly, to the extent we could piece together a sentence that did not lose anything in the translation, we regularly tried to engage people in conversations.  Usually they looked at us like – what the #)$@ are these two morons trying to say.  But it was fun.  Most of the time we all just nodded our heads, smiled, laughed and said “yes”.  Plus, we knew the basics – taxi, chicken, bathroom, mojito and numbers to get us home.  That was enough.

I would be remiss in not spending some time talking about cars and animals.  Everyone has heard about the old cars in Cuba.  You think you can visualize what people are talking about but I assure you, nothing is like being there.  I had heard things like “time warp”; “It is like time stopped in the 50’s”.  That just doesn’t cut it.  The old cars – they are everywhere.  It is not just a few of them – there are thousands.  My best guess is that cars from the 50’s make up roughly half or more than half of the cars on the road.  Some are kept in good shape and some are barely hanging on.  One might assume that they are held together with band aids and duct tape, but I can assure you that the Cubans have access to neither of those things.  The cars are fantastic regardless of their level of repair.  They come in every color imaginable, no dents, always clean on the inside (we’ve noticed that Cubans take tremendous pride in everything and see people washing cars all the time).  Every make and model imaginable is on the road and the drivers always proudly say the make and year of the car.  Many of the cars have parts from other make/models – they use whatever they can get.  A Ford with a Fiat or Mercedes steering wheel, a Hyundai engine (all engines are swapped out for diesel), a Chevy gear shift.  Seeing them all on the road is pretty cool.  In addition to the “classic cars”, there is a whole other set of cars from the 70’s – these are pretty ugly as was most stuff from the 70’s.  Very boxy – mostly Fiat Lado (I think that is right).  They make up many of the government taxi’s and people don’t seem to care as much about these but they do charge less to drive you around than a classic car.  The smallest percentage of cars would be the modern cars – yes, they have modern cars – we think mostly from china.  But they are there – maybe 25% of the cars on the road.  Mainly taxis and mainly government own.  And mainly boring.  You want to see the cars - here is just a sampling from this one day... and yes, there is an actual Edsel towards the bottom.

Now for the animals – one thing I was completely unprepared for was the feral animals.  Dogs and cats roam the streets freely and you cannot walk down a street anywhere without seeing the dogs; cats hide more, but they are there.  The dogs are not aggressive, they don’t beg, they just wander around everywhere.  As a crazy dog lover, it was really hard for me to see – the dogs were dirty and probably had bugs so I couldn’t bring myself to touch any of them – but it did break my heart to see them.  And any female we saw very obviously had puppies somewhere so they were always out looking for food.  I’m not talking about seeing 3 or 4 dogs a day – I think we would easily saw over 100 feral dogs on any given day.

Teaser:  Day 3 is where we really start engaging with the locals and learning more about the people.  And what incredible stories they have.

Monkeyhouse goes to Cuba; Day 1 – What have we gotten ourselves into?

For anyone unfamiliar with the Adventures of Monkeyhouse Travel Blog, Monkeyhouse is just a name we came up years ago to describe our household; I’ve kept travel blogs for most of our family vacations over the years – at least the bigger trips.  It started as a way to keep family and friends informed so we didn’t have to re-tell the same stories over and over.  But it has turned into a way for us to remember our vacations since memories fade as time goes by.  This particular blog is fairly long and detailed due to the overwhelming amount of stuff we learned about Cuba, the number of people we met with so many stories, and the number of experiences we experienced.  So – whether you read some of this or all of it, I hope you enjoy!

***

A little bit of background – I have always wanted to go to Cuba “before it changed”.  An opportunity presented itself last year when the Spartan Race organization decided to offer a Spartan Sprint in Cuba.  We jumped on the opportunity with some friends back in September and had been mentally (and physically) preparing for several months.  Sadly, after booking our travel, the race was canceled – the story goes that the Cuban government revoked the permit due to a shortage in hotel rooms during their busy season.  Coincidentally, the cancellation coincided curiously with a certain inauguration.  Who knows.  In any case, we decided to just go for it.

Getting to Cuba proved to be a challenge in and of itself. Booking flights was the easy part as there are a number of direct flights from the US.  It was mother nature who threw us for a loop.  With 12-18” of snow expected on the day we were connecting through New York, we frantically tried to re-schedule.  United only has one flight per day out of Newark, so we ended up having to go last minute one day early.  Typically not an issue, but with Cuban accommodations taking several days to confirm due to lack of internet access, I just booked the first room I could find.  This becomes important later.

Entering Cuba was a lot less eventful than we anticipated – in order to enter Cuba, Americans require a special Visa stating your reason for travel.  We thought it would be a big deal, but in the end, no one ever asked about our reason for travel or questioned anything – they just took it, stamped our passports, and that was it.  Interestingly, we had to go through security to get OUT of the airport – possibly because having a gun in Cuba is a pretty big offense.  Or maybe there was some other reason – we don’t know. 

The “TSA” people in the airport are primarily women – they all have identical tan uniforms with mini-skirts and an unbelievable array of black stockings with designs.  Apparently individual fashion expression is shown through sexy pantyhose in the airport.  Before leaving the airport, I popped into the toilet (NOTE:  be prepared that toilets will be a recurring theme throughout the rest of the blog).  The bathroom had doors that hung weird, no locks, no toilet seats, and no toilet paper.  Having been forewarned, I was well stocked with Kleenex and was well prepared to hover.  Welcome to Cuba.

I had reserved a taxi to meet us – it was supposed to meet us on our original travel day and while I had warned them we were coming a day early, we never received confirmation.  Luckily, we saw our sign and our driver was waiting.  In hindsight, getting taxis is ridiculously easy – so it wasn’t necessary to be that prepared.    Walking out of the airport we were immediately wow’d by the old cars.  We thought that they were at the airport in abundance since it was a tourist place so we took a bunch of pictures in the parking lot. 

Our taxi was a 70’s Fiat in somewhat decent shape.  This was our first car ride in Cuba, so while the car was old and beat up and had no seat belts, it wasn’t too bad.  The driver had a friend in the front seat – neither spoke much English, but somehow they got us to our first “Casa”.

There are several ways to book accommodations in Cuba – hotels (obviously) and the very common Casa Particulares, or “Casas” – think Bed and Breakfast – sort of.  Several years ago, the government allowed people to rent rooms out of their homes to make extra money – this was a huge deal as most people are barely scraping by.  The Casas need a license and there is a special sign that gets put placed on the door indicating that a room is for rent. 

A Casa can be an entire house, it can be a room in a house, it can be part of a shared house – basically anything.  The nice thing about Casas is that they are CHEAP.  Typically about $30-$50 a night and they will bring you a huge breakfast for $5 per person.  We tried to opt for private rooms with private bathrooms, and the “entire” space where possible.  Some people who have access to the Internet have signed up with websites that help promote their Casas with pictures – I booked most of our rooms in this way.  Casaparticulares.com; cubaaccommodation.com or now you can use AirB&B which is a little bit more expensive, but you can pay with an American credit card ahead of time.  Hotels are owned and run by the government – we tried to avoid anything government run and get our money into the hands of the people. Plus, the government run hotels and restaurants are notoriously low quality with poor service and generally overpriced.

Recall that this first night booking was a last minute booking and we had no idea what to expect.  We pulled up to a house in a very Cuban/non-touristy area – one we might consider lower or lower/middle income, relatively speaking.  Our building had a skinny little door that opened into a stairway area that was dark, crumbling, and had exposed mechanicals at the bottom of the steps.  I was getting a bit nervous when we got to the second floor and our host let us in.  The door opened and I have to say that I let my breath out a little in relief when we walked in.  While incredibly sparse, the apartment was fairly large, the rooms were very clean and neat even though everything was well worn.  Each room was painted vibrantly - bright turquoise front room, bright peach dining area, and a royal blue kitchen.  

There was a nice front porch with chairs and plants, it had two bedrooms, a small living room and dining room – and a flat screen tv (apparently people have only been allowed to own tvs for the past few years, so everyone has flat screens).  The bathroom was modern and had a toilet seat as well as a half a roll of toilet paper!  The kitchen was tiny and had minimalist basics and a single small pan for cooking.  Oh, and a tiny hot water heater was mounted on the kitchen wall above the stove.

Our hosts a few houses away  – it was obvious that they took huge pride in this apartment and the fact that they were able to have something they could rent out.

We took a few minutes to settle in as there was really not much to do and nowhere to unpack, and then decided to go out exploring – it was about 4pm.  Our exploratory walk can best be described as three phases.  The neighborhood area, the depressing area, and the tourist area.

Our Casa was in a very residential area – clearly all locals.  There were no street signs anywhere and with no obvious major streets, we just hoped we could find our way home.  As we walked, we saw a ton of kids in school uniforms - I'm guessing school had just let out.  The buildings we walked by were, by American standards, truly depressing - crumbling buildings, broken windows, garbage everywhere.  All of the buildings are covered in a blackish mold.  Clothes lines with clothes hanging out of windows and between buildings were in every apartment and hanging off ever balcony.  In Chicago, one would consider these buildings similar to really old dilapidated projects.  I noticed, though, that all of the kids we passed just seemed like regular kids – talking, laughing with no idea that the way they are living is so different from what we are used to.

As we walked, there was always random debris on the sidewalk.  We passed chunks of concrete, piles of rubble and broken pipes - pretty much any random thing - just laying in the middle of the sidewalk.  Anyone familiar with my level of clumsiness can sympathize with Damon who was convinced I was going to fall in a hole or off a curb or trip over one of the many things in our path.  Entirely possible given that I was always looking up at stuff.  On our walk, we passed a lot of parks - one in particular stands out because as we were walking by, amidst the piles of garbage, I noticed a pile of something else - animal skulls – just chilling under a tree right next to the sidewalk.  Sacrificial maybe? Who knows.  But no one seemed concerned. 

  

Oh, and there were chickens - we saw them just sort of roaming in front of apartment buildings.  We did see one dead chicken in the road (insert obligatory chicken crossing the road joke here).  We walked for at least an hour and never saw anything even remotely "commercial" anywhere - just roads, houses, people and garbage – I’m guessing we were in the outer “suburbs” of Havana.  Admittedly, I was trying to make the best of everything even though inside I was like WTF – is this seriously what the next week is going to be like??? 

Finally we happened upon a famous monument - Revolution Plaza – which people probably recognize from any major news story about Cuba.  It has a tall tower on a grassy hill and a short way away, two buildings with sculptures on the sides of the buildings with the two biggest national heroes of the revolution– Che Guevara & Fidel Castro.  Side note – pretty much everything that happens in Cuba is “post-revolution” – even though it was sixty years ago, it is the single most defining moment in recent Cuban history and EVERYTHING revolves around La Revolucion.

We started to walk up to the monument, but apparently everything closes early and we just missed it timing wise.  So we kept walking…Then we got to the depressing area.

The depressing area was I suppose what you could call a more commercial area - we stayed on a main street to keep our bearings.  Tons of people walking around - all Cubans, no tourists - it was probably 5-6pm at this point.  Lining the streets are crumbling buildings - most have the doors open and on the first floor many were selling something.  These shops are TINY - most shops consisted of a small alcove in front of doorway of the building.  They might be selling bread or ice cream or we saw a lot of tech fix it shops.  We generally couldn't tell what most of them even did. I think people just know.  We had no idea which buildings were inhabited and which were not – unless you saw people, it was hard to tell.  A building that would easily be condemned in the US was typically home to people &/or “businesses”.

Every now and then there would be a slightly bigger shop with clothes or household things.  We would say, look - there is "Sears" or there is "Home Depot" - maybe 1000-2000 total square feet of store.  Those were the big stores.  This was clearly an area for locals and while I didn't feel weirdly out of place, we were definitely the only Americans and certainly the only tourists around. 

At one place, they were selling fried dough balls - and who wouldn't want that?  The price was “1” so Damon bought one donut hole sized fried dough ball for 1 CUC.  Side note on money:  Cuba currently uses two completely separate currencies.  The CUP is only for locals and the CUC is only for tourists, although locals can accept it.  The ratio is approximately 25 CUP for 1 CUC

I kept telling Damon that paying 1 CUC for a donut hole sized dough ball in a Cuban dominated neighborhood – where the average person makes the equivalent of $15/month seemed totally ridiculous.  Of course we later realized the price of the dough ball was in Cuban Pesos – CUP and not tourist CUC.  The cost should have been four cents for the dough ball.  We considered that Lesson #1 of many lessons to come.  It was a tasty, albeit expensive, fried dough ball….  

No amount of verbal or written description truly captures the level of dilapidation in this area.  Most of the buildings are just crumbling and falling down and again, the garbage and sidewalk debris litter the streets.  At one point we came across a “mall” – it was a building that sort of had a food court and a few stores on a few levels.  We went in to check it out – the stores are fairly empty of goods and there is garbage on the floors.  I had to use the bathroom so we found that and as per usual, there was a woman outside waiting for money just for the privilege of going in.  No toilet paper, room filled with cigarette smoke, and a little bit gross – definite hover.  But since there is a lack of public toilets, I made due.

I haven’t mentioned the driving and the roads yet.  The roads are pretty busy with cars (more on cars later).  People really don’t pay much attention to crossings and cars don’t really pay attention to lanes, lines or pedestrians.  Wherever you cross a road, you do it at your own peril.  There are roundabouts and 6-lane streets with medians – lots of ways to get hit.  We definitely were doing the frogger thing every time we crossed a street trying not to die.  Funny thing was – Cubans just leisurely stroll through traffic all up and down the streets.  Damon would always hold my hand and drag me across traffic – I think he assumed I would trip at some point.  Not unreasonable.

As we walked and as I tried not to freak out, I told Damon that I was just waiting for us to turn the corner and I would say “ah, there it is – the area I’ve been waiting for where I’ll feel more comfortable”.  It took a while, but eventually we had the “ah” moment when we hit the more touristy area.  In the touristy area we started to see bigger buildings, renovated hotels, the grand theater,

the capital

and a lot more touristy people.  The streets were wider and we started to see restaurants.  Don’t misunderstand that this tourist area was perfect – for each renovated building that looked amazing, there were 10 more that were falling down around it. 

We made it into the Saratoga Hotel and finally changed money so we could eat and taxi home. 

Another note on money – Cuba does not take American credit cards Period.  And, they charge an extra 10 percent surcharge on American money – so any money we wanted to spend in Cuba had to be brought in cash, in Euros, which we had changed in the US.  So basically we had to walk the streets with several thousand dollars at all times.  That was fun.

We found a bench where we could re-group and pulled out the map and guidebook to try to find somewhere to eat for dinner.  One thing that is really interesting to note as we sat in the park – there were no cell phones.  In the US, everyone just stares down at their phones – in Cuba, IF anyone has a phone, they are using it to talk; there is no easily accessible wifi so smart phones really serve no purpose.  Everyone was talking to each other.  WHAT???  It was delightful.  We eventually found a restaurant and enjoyed a massive and fantastic seafood dinner along with the drink that became our daily elixir – mojitos – always with a large sprig of fresh mint.  After dinner, full and exhausted having been awake since about 3:45am, we found a taxi stand where there were about 50 taxis hanging out – ranging from every imaginable old car from the 50’s or 70’s in every state of repair and disrepair, there were pedicabs, maybe even horses..  But we chose a special taxi called a "coco" taxi.  Imagine a football helmet sitting on top of a small motorcycle.  Yup.  That's what we drove 4 miles home in.  A motorized open faced bright yellow football helmet with wheels.

The taxi found our little house and I was pleasantly surprised to see a light on in the staircase.  We worked our way upstairs, brushed our teeth with bottled water (NOTE:  you cannot drink the water in Cuba) and crashed hard in the little bed, which requires its own description.

Our bedroom had a window AC unit so we slept comfortably from a temperature perspective.  We had heard that Cuban beds are not quite what we are used to.  This one was probably queen size.  One thin mattress, no box spring and it sort of rested on a thin single spring layer.  So when you got in, basically your butt drops and you sleep in a v-position.  But when a second person gets in, you have the v and then you also both roll into the middle.  We tried to stay as close to our respective edges but ultimately caved, literally, and spooned in the middle.  Given these circumstances - it was surprisingly comfortable and we slept for about 10-11 hours!!!  And nothing even hurt the next day!

Thank you John and Patricia Sampson

Blog Post 14 - the last one.

Woke up bright and early at 3:30am NZ time to catch our flight.  I had another hour to sleep, but as anyone who ever has an early flight knows, once you are up, you are up - don't want to miss that flight!  We got to the CHCH airport - thank goodness we were early since there is a 23 kilo weight limit on bags and we had one at 28k.  Ugh.  We shoved a bunch of stuff into plastic bags and off we went.  Sadly, that meant no duty free wine from NZ.

Flight was an uneventful 3 1/2 hours - they have about 20 new release movies available, so I was quite happy and could have stayed on the plane longer.  Imitation Game and Horrible Bosses 2.  Landed at 8:30am (2 hour time change).  Got through the airport and into a taxi in a record breaking 30 minutes - including customs, etc.  We stayed at the Park Hyatt on Sydney Harbor (thank you Hyatt points) with an astounding view of the harbor and the famed Opera House (see FB picture from our balcony). 

After quickly dumping our stuff, we took off - with only one day in Sydney, no time to waste.  We walked to the opera house for a tour and while waiting in line, a woman walks up to us and says she has free tickets that she got from purchasing opera tickets and they weren't going to use the tour tickets - she gave us two tickets for the exact tour we wanted ($76 savings) - we just had to be them.  Thank you John and Patricia Sampson!  The opera tour was interesting - the inside has a bunch of different theaters and we got to go into a few while sets were down (could see behind the scenes, literally) and while the Sydney Orchestra was practicing.  All and all, a good show.

I was starting to fade, so we grabbed lunch on the wharf, which perked me up a little, then we walked  around downtown trying to find the local office of my new company so we could take a picture by the sign.  Given that we hadn't showered and were pretty grubby, we decided not to go up to the actual office.  Barely made it back to the hotel before collapsing - keep in mind we had the bridge climb still scheduled.

We relaxed for about 38 minutes and took off again for the bridge.  We had to walk pretty far and up a bunch of stairs to get there (exhausted) and made it with 10 minutes to spare.  The climb organization is amazing - they have a system of safety and processes that is really thorough - we noticed this a lot in NZ, too.  We harnessed up and again, off we went. 

After jumping off a 43 meter bridge, climbing to the top of a 141 meter bridge was no big thing.  Very windy as we went up (40-50k winds), but the views were spectacular.  Yeah sunny skies!  Lots of good stories from our climbing guide about how and when the bridge went up. Totally rejuvenated!

Post bridge, we scrapped our plans for further touristy things and a fancy dinner.  We had some local pizza and beer on the way back to the hotel and then just relaxed.  It is now morning - we have about an hour left before leaving for the airport.  We are looking at the sun rise over the Opera house.

It has been a once in a lifetime experience and we are so thankful to have been given the opportunity to do this.  For those of you who followed our journey - we hope you enjoyed reading about it even a fraction as much as we enjoyed doing it.

G'Day.

Kia Ora New Zealand! :(

Blog Post 13:

NOTE:  Kia Ora in Maori is the basic "hello, goodbye, good tidings, good life" greeting that you get everywhere.

Well, here it is, our last night in NZ and it has been an absolutely fabulous trip.  Very sad to be leaving, but as anyone who knows me knows, I'll be thankful to get home to Thorkey - of course we still have one more adventure in Australia, but that is for later. 

To round out the last day or so, I left off yesterday on our way back to Manapouri.  From Manapouri, we drove to Te Anau, about 20 minutes away and we did find wifi - more coffee, more dessert - you have to buy something to get free wifi, and we have basically been eating our way through these blog postings trying to find wifi anywhere in this country that actually works! 

We had one final tour yesterday out of Te Anau to see the famous NZ glow worms.  We took a (nother) boat out to more caves, hiked into a cave with a guide, got on a boat and turned out all of the lights and looked up - it is pitch black except for these little glowing blue dots all over the cave ceiling.  It is pretty cool.  Without going into too much detail - the glow worms are some sort of fly in the larvae stage.  The make "fishing lines" - sticky silk lines (like spider webs,) a few inches long that hang from the ceiling.  Then the larvae butt (not the official terminology) has some glowing blue junk (also not official terminology) in it to attract other cave bugs who fly to the light and get stuck in the sticky silk lines. All in all, it was pretty interesting.

As this was our last scheduled outing in NZ and we had an 8 hour drive back to Christchurch to return the Campervan, we decided to knock off as much as possible in the evening.  Plus, we still had 4 hours left in The Martian.  So, we basically drove until the book ended somewhere North of Dunedin (we stopped for a delish Italian dinner in Dunedin).  I won't tell you the ending - it is a great book, though.  Will be a movie one day.

We found a place to freedom camp near the ocean - NZ is awesome about letting you camp in certain areas gratis.  In the morning, we were very rudely woken up by a chicken. Damon says it was a rooster, but it looked like a chicken.  Anyhoo, this damn thing was cockadoodle doing from a ways away and walked up to our camper pretty much yelling at us to get out - about a foot from our front door.  I have pix and video - it was kind of funny and did get us moving. 

We were going to just knock out the last 3.5 hours but I convinced Damon to do 2 more stops that our guidebook recommended,  They were right near where we camped and we had the time, so we went.  The first stop was a lighthouse that somehow became a penguin habitat for one of the rarest penguins around - the yellow eyed penguin - or something like that.  We found the place and started walking around the bluff and sure enough, we came across a few penguins, took like a billion pictures, and kept walking - there were a bunch of penguins roaming around (always in pairs) and we got close to a few of them - they are endangered and in a loosely enclosed area, so no touching, but we were maybe a foot or two away from them.  We kept walking - more penguins - and then we saw the fur seals - everywhere,  Lots of babies playing in the water, and adults sunning all over the bluff - with no barriers.  NZ lets you get up close and personal with nature a lot of the time - we are on a bluff, with huge cliff drops on both sides, and a bunch of seals between us and where we wanted to go.  We just kept a few meters (I speak metric now) between us and them and hoped none got pissy.  I'm sure they are used to people up there, but they are also very aware of what is going on.  One movement and 25 seal heads turn in your direction.  The babies just race to the water if they get scared.  Lots of pix and videos.

Back to the car and to our second pit stop, the Moeraki Rocks - imagine a big gray sand beach at low tide (there are not many beaches in NZ that we saw).  In the middle of this huge beach, clumped together, are these completely random out of place perfectly round rocks about 4-5' in diameter.  Think big balls from Wipeout, only rocks, not red balls.  Some of them have broken apart - almost like they have exploded - and you can see some sort of yellow mineral all through the rocks - but the surfaces are perfectly rounded rocks. I'm convinced they are alien rocks and the split ones have just hatched already.

The last few hours of driving were brutal mostly for Damon - we hit the "Iowa" section of NZ - nothing but flat and farms for the last few hours.  NZ has about a gazillion deer (on farms), about 10 gazillion cows, and about 100 gazillion sheep.  We saw a lot of them en route.

Got to our final hotel in Christchurch and went downtown for dinner.  You may have heard CHCH had two huge earthquakes in Nov '10 and Feb '11.  The city was devastated.  Here we are more than 4 years later and the city is still in pretty bad shape.  Buildings are down everywhere, lots of empty spaces, tons of fences, buildings still being propped up and the early stages of new construction.  They made a temporary shopping mall out of shipping containers which people say will be permanent.  We had dinner on the main restaurant drag and I'd say easily 1/3 of the buildings were barricaded.  Every building has cracks on it.  Very sad.  The huge "Christchurch" cathedral is in ruins and there are signs everywhere trying to get funding to restore it.  Meanwhile, it stands as it was after the earthquake, propped up with a gaping hole in the side and slightly crumbling.

We are now getting ready for our 4:30am wake-up so we can spend our one day in Sydney tomorrow.  But before I sign off, a few things about NZ toilets - first, while we love Duke, we have a no "Duke" rule inside.  It will be nice to have regular toilets again.  Second, they have strange flushers here.  There are always two buttons - presumably one is for a light flush and the other for a heavy flush.  I've flushed about 500 toilets and still have no idea which button does what.  And finally, regardless of the button you push, the toilets flush like a jet engine, no matter where you are - so for anyone who wanted to know if NZ toilets swirl backwards, we have no idea - the water generally just shoots out like a canon without swirling.

Off to Australia tomorrow for our final blog post.

Seals and Dolphins and Penguins, Oh My!

Blog Post 12

Woke up early and made ourselves a nice hot breakfast (thank you Duke) and then made the easy drive (only about an hour and a half) to a tiny town called Manapouri and waited for our tour. 

To get to Doubtful Sound, we started with an hour boat ride across Lake Manapouri, followed by an hour bus ride in a completely remote area to get to our boat (ship?) "The Fiordland Navigator".  Solid pouring rain the entire time, but in Fiordland, that is a good thing - the rain makes thousands of waterfalls off the mountains that typically dry up about an hour or two after the rain stops.

We had about 68 people on the boat - the cabins were really spacious and we had a private bath and shower.  The Kiwis who run these tours are amazing - everyone is friendly and all of the guides infuse humor and history into their talks - everyone seems very proud of what they do.  Refreshing.

How to describe Doubtful Sound… Imagine mountain forests with occasional breaks in the green where the trees have fallen down to the water creating a rock "path", which is where the waterfalls tumble down the mountains.  The first half of our day was a very spooky grey - mist, low clouds, rain - everything was one color but very shadowy - think of a pirate ghost ship backdrop and you'll nail it.

A few hours in, the rain let up so we stopped in a cove for kayaking.  Of course, the minute we get in the kayaks, the rain starts back up again in full force.  The temperatures were not bad and we were well prepared, so it wasn't cold or uncomfortable despite the rain.  Of course Damon forgot a change of pants, so he went out in his "ranger panties" that happened to be stashed in his pack for emergencies (think 1980's running shorts.  SHORT shorts).  Made me proud.  After kayaking, they let people jump off the boat and go for a swim - Damon went, it was just a bit too chilly for me.

Post swim, there was a lot of hanging out on the various decks taking pictures.  As soon as we got out of the water, the sky cleared up and we got sun, which gave the Fiord's a whole different look.  We made it out to the Tasman sea, saw a bunch of fur seals and some blue penguins, and then turned around.  We had an amazing dinner and eventually docked in a small cove for the night.    The sky cleared up and it was dark enough for good stargazing, and then we went to bed - the overnight was so calm, you wouldn't suspect you were sleeping on water.

Woke up bright and early - they start the engines at 6:30am, and a delicious breakfast, and started the cruise back - exploring different Fiord arms along the way.  Everyone was on the lookout for the resident dolphin pod, and (thank you very much) I happened to be in the captain's lookout area (the "bridge") and I spotted the dolphins first, informed the captain, and we bee-lined in that direction to see a pod of dolphins swimming around - a few came close to the boat.

Rest of the ride was uneventful - no rain (yeah) and we saw a few more penguins. Well, I saw some ripples in the water and maybe a head or a tail feather - they are tiny and don't like to come near the boat and mostly stay under water.

We are now on the boat back to Manapouri as I write and hope to come across Wi-Fi soon so we can post.  More later!