Scissor Quirk

Christmas 2011: Cuba, Pt.2

Part One of our vacation photos, right here.

As I blogged about a few weeks ago, mister husband and I spent a week in Cuba over Christmas for our holidays...we decided to top it off with a 'tradition', of sorts: the mister likes to see at least one sunrise on the beach of every tropical destination we head off to. At first, I was skeptical - like, 'you want me to get up when??', but we'd done it before in Mexico and Hawaii, and both were gorgeous, so it was a go!

We had sort of a late night before, packing...we decided the only day to have an alarm (or clock, even) on vacation should be the last day, and our bus to the airplane didn't leave until noon, so we got up at 5:30 am, headed to the bar (which was open - yeah!), got some yummy boozy Spanish Coffee and headed down to the sand. The beach chair guys were already there..and were quite surprised...lol.

So, we settled in and watched the sun come up...it was beautiful!
Obligatory sunrise shots:

Only...there was one hitch.

I'm not sure if all beaches in Cuba have them, but this beach was covered in swarms of invisible painful biting little bugs! Like, a sharp pinching. All over you. At all times. It wasn't noticable during the day, but before the heat gets going, I guess these little dudes were in full swing...

These about sum up our realization of them:

Hah. Oh, man. We were confused, because they were so tiny...we didn't know where the bites were coming from at first, cuz they weren't leaving bite marks like mosquitos do. Anyhoo, the only way to ward them off was to either repeatedly slap every square inch of your exposed skin, or hop in the ocean, so I watched the rest of the surise from there...lol. And at least we didn't have bug bites, right?

Wrong. lol. About 20-some hours later - when we were picking up our luggage at the airport at home - the bites kicked in. Like, my-socks-are-itching-my-entire-itchy-feet, kicked in. For the next week and a half, our legs and arms were covered in little puffy, suuuuper un bearably itchy bug bites! lol. It was horrible.

Good thing they were balanced out by the lovely sunrise, that's for sure. But I highly suggest doing this sunrise-viewing in Hawaii, were they pride themselves on having no sand bugs...lol. :)

Christmas 2011: Cuba, Pt.1

Aah...finally! Vacation pictures!

I had a chance over the weekend to go through the photos we took on our Christmas holidays in Cuba! :) Mister husband and I hopped off to the 'island' of Cayo Coco for a week this year, and had a pretty relaxing time - here's a little peek at our time there:

The whole idea of choosing a place in Cuba that was away from the mainland was to sit on the beach and roast in the sun...I don't feel like we saw much Cuba, persay, but we saw lotsa this:

It was pretty quiet at our resort when we got there - we stayed at the 'Blau Colonial' and it was the oldest hotel there, I heard. At first that was a little weird - like, 'why's it so quiet?' and 'there's only one bar open?'. However, near the end of our stay it got progressively busier and it sucked having to suddenly wait in line for a drink at the one bar...lol. We realized how awesome the un-busy had been!

Annnd, onto more beach-laying:

See? Lotsa beach time.

We ended up on the Atlantic side of Cuba (who knew? we plan last-minute, sans research!), so when we got there the waves were crazy and I had visions of swimming in tumultuous Hawaiian seas, again (not my favorite, that undercurrent) - it turns out it was just super-windy for days, and near the end of the week the wind calmed down and it got hotter = calm, lovely water!

Here's a bit of the hotel:

(More on that there vodoo doll at the end of the post).

My favorite weird pink castle building! You can climb to the top. :)

Annnd...you guessed it! Drinks. And more beach:

And that about sums it up!

I think I got through 3 full books, we sat there for so long...lol.

The Highlights of Our Trip:

- Our hotel had a fabulous piano bar with the sweetest old Cuban singers
- We fast became addicted to Spanish coffees (earliest = 6:30 am)
- We went horse back riding (yay!) - which sounds cool, right?

The Lowlights of Our Trip:

- Horseback riding! lol.

Let me explain: the horses were unbearably skinny, which made me sad before we even got going on the trail. With no water to drink, no less, standing outside the hotel in the beating sun. I was in the middle of the three, which means the Cuban horse guy (on his cell phone) insistently whipped my horse the whole time, making it go faster over many precarious lava rocks and sand. Then mister husband thinks its a good idea to make them gallop on this precarious ground, to which my bare ankles rubbing the foot thing's metal and my apparently horrible bra were not too happy with - pretty much so painful I could cry. And I'm an optomistic person! Oh, and then I twisted my ankle on the way down when cell-phone guy made sure my foot landed on a rolling round stick. Ouch!

- That time mister husband found a cool but creepy old voodoo doll! 

He picked it up on a beach walk and brought it back to the hotel - within a few hours we ended up having a huge fight, and then our hotel room flooded. Yes, flooded - the entire big bathroom ceiling pretty much became a waterfall. After nearly the whole week with no hitches, it seemed like too big a coincidence and we got the heck out of there and didn't touch it again - definitely not wanting that kind of luck on the plane trip home, no siree! lol.

Anyhoo, overall - Cuba was rad!

Those 'Lowlights' were really just pretty small hitches, and everything was otherwise lovely through my rosy Cuba-filled glasses - and we came home feeling well-rested and happy! Aah.

Oh...until the sand bug bites from our sunrise viewing kicked in. 
But that's another post.

Kayak, we did.

Aha! I was good and brought my old point-and-shoot digital camera with us on our kayak trip this weekend (on the salty ocean kayak, no less - it's old, so I wasn't really worried about it - but I missed my good camera!).

Here's a little rundown of our overnight kayak-to-the-campsite adventure:

The couple we went with - Mike and Kelly - picked us up bright and early, and we drove out to Deep Cove and had a yummy breakfast before packing out gear into our 3 kayaks (we had one double and two singles for four of us). We were really surprised by how much gear you can tuck away into those things!

Mister husband packing, while wearing both of our hats.

After we packed we put our gear on, learned how to control the rudder, and Kelly and I hopped into the double kayak, leaving the boys on their own. I had to steer the thing, which was pretty funny - lol. I kept getting my pedals reverse!

We meandered across the cove for about two hours, paddling, until we got to Twin Island (we forgot to check the map before we left, so it was a bit of a guessing game, but we found it!). We were going to keep paddling for a bit, but our rudder broke (gah!), and with all the gear in there it was hard for us girls to steer with our paddles. We pulled up to the dock and unloaded everything, and the boys had to carry the boats all the way up the steep low-tide dock!

The island is super-small, with a campsite on it that was empty when we arrived, so we scored this awesome ocean-view site and set up camp. Well - sort of - we used the wooden platform as a hang-out spot, and we brought 4 hammocks (they're smaller and lighter than tents!) that we hung in the trees just up the hill.

Our shady but lovely campsite/hang-out spot.

We spent the rest of the afternoon noshing on lunch, going for a dip in the cold cold ocean (we had the nicest weather!), playing Uno, taking the boats out again for a spin before sundown (complete with boys carrying them back down to the dock), and then getting back in time to cook supper and hang the hammocks up. We all sat around until it got darker and chillier, watching the stars. We couldn't have a fire there, but we had candles to keep it cute. :)

They were new to hammocks, so it was fun trying them out and getting layered up and figuring out who got to sleep in the two fancy hammocks - he he. We all slept pretty well, but woke up to our hotdogs having been eaten by one happy raccoon! lol.

We had to have the boats back by 11 am on sunday, so we woke up early, made coffee and breakfast, packed up, and then off we went!

The boys had to do this so many times!

Some shots from the road:

It was just gorgeous!

The only hitch was that my arms are still aching from paddling - lol. I had a big old nap when we got home, after all that work - oh, and the boys forgot to pack my bag of toiletries, which means I had no ammenities (think toothbrush, deoderant, make up, etc.) so I had to sleep in my contacts - ugh!

It was such a fun time!
Have you kayaked before? Kayak-camped? I highly suggest it!

Let me know if you have any questions. :)

I should mention that it was my first real time actually kayaking on the ocean with a purpose - we kayaked in Maui, but in those plastic shallow kayaks you sit on top of, and we didn't go very far but to turtle-search.

A Kayaking We Go!

photo source.

Off we go!

I want to say, 'off we go, extreme camping' - but I feel like it's not...I mean, it's the most extremest of camping we'll have done. (People hike into the grand canyon and camp, for goodness sakes. They go down the sliding sands into Maui's Heleakala crater and camp - yeesh! Baby steps).

We're renting kayaks with some also-adventurous friends, packing all our gear into waterproof bags and kayak compartments, and paddling out to an island for the night with our hammocks. I'm so excited!!

We leave bright and early tomorrow. Mister husband has still not packed anything, so I'll giggle at him tomorrow morning at 6am as he's scrambling and I'm calmly eating my hold-me-til-breakfast mango. Oh yeah. :)

I hope you get up to something fun this weekend!

Weekend Littles.

Little peeks of this past Sunday:

Motorcycle riding to Deep Cove. Lugging boots & changing out of jeans in bushes.
Scoping out the kayak-launch spot & my fave crackle nailpolish.
Shell sand stuck to us and mister husband building stick-things on the beach.
I wanted that orange boat like crazy.

You know, the little things.

Trying to make it a better habit, taking pictures on outings...
I'm one of those bring-camera-but-don't-use-it types - ack!