A little bit more of Cuba

I thought I really ought to say that despite sitting through a roaring catagory 2 hurricane, we had a good time. Cuba is a beautiful place, very green and picturesque. In between the showers the sun was lovely, before the storms the sea was the turquoise blue of the Caribbean, despite the fact we were on the Atlantic side of the island.  It quickly returned to this lovely colour a few days after the storm although it didn't completely calm down. We had lots of fun snorkeling off the beach and off a boat, there was more to see underwater then I expected. I loved to see Little Miss at only 9 years old, snorkeling in the sea for hours and diving down if anything on the sea bed took her eye - we were so proud of her. Me being of that Jaws generation still has to keep looking behind me every few strokes!

We went horse riding and fishing and did so much swimming, although one pool was still out of action when it was time to leave.
We played table tennis, and badminton (in a strong wind!!) and ate a lot, oh yes we ate huge quantities of everything - or maybe that was just me, I couldn't possibly confirm or deny that!

The builder managed to lose one of shoes on the day of arrival (must have fell out of our bags when we had to swap rooms). That doesn't sound too bad but bear in mind he only owns one pair being that he lives in trainers or work boots! So every night at dinner I had to stand in front so as to hide his feet - proper shoes were required for dinner, and sneak him into the restaurant! He enquired at reception everyday for the missing shoe (20 years old, black lace up?) - they had us earmarked as the slightly mad family as we queued at reception behind people asking when water would be restored, when their roof would be repaired, whether there was any more drinking water available - then us, "have you seen a left shoe similar to this one?"!

We had no water to the rooms for 3 days and every one had to take buckets to the swimming pool to bring back and flush the loo or wash with. Husband decided that was too much of a palaver and covered himself in shower gel early one morning and went for a swim - the trail of soap suds behind him was a little telling! We had no TV for days and the drinking water started to run out. However they kept the enormous buffet running so we were happy!

The boys managed quite a bit of this.......

number 1 son bowling

number 2 son batting

Not sure who sneaked the bat and ball into their suitcase!

Despite all of the above I will very much look forward to going to Cuba again one day. We didn't visit as many places as we'd have like to as roads were closed but we did spend lots of quality family time together - albeit some of it huddled together in the dark while a hurricane raged outside!

 

I failed miserably to get number 1 son to buy a T-shirt like this

 

which I wanted him to wear to his next A level politics class -

 if only to wind up his slightly right of centre tutor!

 

And even more disappointingly, after cleverly matching my nail polish to the exact colour of the sea, they changed the damn colour of the sea!

 

But it wasn't all bad, on the day before we flew home, guess what turned up? The builder's missing shoe! So he was correctly attired for at least 1 evening meal out of 14. I wasn't very happy about that in actual fact as it was all I could think of to buy him for his birthday & Christmas - 1 black shoe!

Well that is the last holiday post - life goes on and already we've been home for over a week.
The weekend just gone I hosted a charity Christmas fair (bad planning to have it 6 days after we got home!) so we were as busy as ever..... and the indoor cricket continues......