Saying Adios!

As we wrap up our bike trip (2000 kms later!!) and prepare to head back to Canada, we can't help but think about the things that we'll miss....

...fresh fruit and fresh fruit juices with every breakfast
...street pizzas for 10 cents!
...$2 mickeys of cuban rum
...cheap and delicious ice cream (guilt-free thanks to all our biking)
...fried plantain chips (honest, we're not just here for the food!)
...working on our tans while we ride our bikes
...palm and banana trees
...friendly, smiling faces and waves as we ride by
...mojitos and pina coladas
...riding past horse- and bull-drawn carts and dodging sheep and goats on the road
...quiet back roads with more bicycles than cars
...live music and watching sexy salsa
...warm, blue sea water!

But there are also some things that we won't miss...

...men hissing and kissing at us as we pass
...riding in the rain
...having wet horse poop spray up our backs while we ride in the rain
...keeping track of two currencies
...rice and beans (at least not for a few weeks)
...sterilizing all of our water
...lumpy, bumpy beds (often shared)

Jodie and Vanessa are headed to the beach for a few more days of relaxing and I'm flying home tomorrow to start a new job on Monday. It's been an amazing trip and this is one place that I look forward to coming back to. So for now, instead of saying goodbye, I'll just say Hasta Luego, Cuba!

You´re going to get wet!

People here love to tell us that we´re going to get wet. Se van a mojar! We´ve heard it far to many times on this trip. It´s often when we´ve already been riding through a downpour for hours and the use of the future tense seems sort of ironic - we couldn´t possibly be any wetter. But sometimes it´s well in advance... so far in advance that we´ve let the sun and light clouds fool us into hanging our laudry out on our bobs to dry and keeping our cameras out at the ready. Unfortunately, they´re right more often than not and we end up fully showered before we even reach our casa at the end of the day!

Fortunately, we didn´t hear anything about getting wet over our last two days of riding (we got dumped on pretty much all day on the day we rode out of Havana and into Cuba`s westernmost province) and we could enjoy the quiet backroads, rolling farmland and impressive limestone mountains of Pinar del Rio. And get one last sunburn....

Christine