For prosperity’s sake, Ed and I are still in Cuba. Sure, the beach is a little further away, the jungle cats are surprisingly bold and exceedingly fat, and the breakfast buffet is nothing but cold pizza, but the bed is deliciously comfortable, Diet Coke is readily available, and there’s internet EVERYWHERE. I could get used to this.

In reality, we arrived home to SPARTA at 3pm yesterday, after traveling for 12 hours. We were somewhat exhausted but delighted to be back, and wisely dealt with the rather tasteless post-vacation chores immediately – we unpacked, did laundry, and put everything away. It’s like we were never out of the country, except I am a dozen or so shades darker than normal and Ed does not glow in the dark.

I wrote many words while in Cuba, but stopped writing daily logs after Wednesday – Havana was fresh on my tongue and I didn’t think I could adequately describe the awesome, and it’s really hard to come up with interesting ways to say “we laid on the beach for ten hours and read, drank, snorkeled, swam, and napped, then we ate and then we swam in the pool”. That’s not to say that I don’t have a lot to say – you know me; I can’t go to the bathroom without having a lot to say about it – but you’ll definitely see a pattern in my vacation words; eventually I just grew too content to be verbose and I don’t feel an iota of guilt.

Before I post my Cuban musings and share pictures though, I just gotta follow tradition – here is Cuba in Numbers!

Number of:

• Hours on a plane: 14
• Times drunk: 1.5
• Drinks consumed (by me): 25
• What the hell?: I can’t get drunk on pina coladas
• Drinks consumed (by our group): 200+
• Times the AC went out in our room: 6
• Amount we cared: 0
• Pictures taken: 982
• Pictures of lizards taken: 981
• Meals per day eaten: 3
• Diet Coke consumed between 11:30pm Sunday May 8th and 2:30pm Monday May 16th: 0
• Minutes out of international customs before I was drinking Diet Coke: 4
• Hot, glorious days in Cuba: 7
• Rain, in mm: 0
• Minutes left on the 1 30-minute internet card we bought by the time we left: 6
• Cigars smoked: 1
• Times we needed to use the Emergency Spices we brought: 0
• Lobsters eaten: 8
• Tragic sunburns that should have been administered to by a nurse in fishnet stockings: 2 (one on me, one on Josh)
• Love I have for Havana: SO MANY
• Olives sensuously licked by Josh: TOO MANY
• Days into our trip that we started planning our return trip for next May: 3
• Coral found tangled in genitalia: 1
• bps to be had over Cuban internet: 4
• Jungle cats met: 2
• Jungle dogs met: 4
• Our favourite Jungle Dog: Teata, aka Nips
• Men in budgie smugglers: 150
• Men with impressive packages: 1
• Naked boobs seen (not mine): 2
• Nipple slips (mine): 1
• Hours spent lounging on the beach without a care in the world: 70 or so
• Times almost killed by a chicken: 1
• Glorious sunsets seen: 7
• Glorious sunrises seen: 1 (sleep is delicious)
• Ominous numbered sweeteners in Cuban diet cola: 3
• Amount of resemblance to Diet Coke: -2402342

More later – we have no food in the house, and should probably fix that. It’s going to be really, really difficult to have to PAY for food – there’s a lot to be said about all-inclusive, and it’s almost all good.

I missed you, internet!

i plan to start drinking diet coke out of these at home