I’m laying in bed, finishing my hangover that had to be temporarily suspended lest I die, while we unexpectedly road horses up a mountain to swim in a waterfall.

Being the rainy season, Cuba is absolutely sweltering and extremely muggy. Matt gets sweaty at the best of time but in Cuba, he is sweating constantly. So as you can imagine, horse riding in the middle of the day with hangovers was not the most pleasant experience, waterfall or no waterfall.

 

You see, it all started on a balmy (muggy) Cuban night when we were charmed by a street bar tender into having a few mojitos. We sat on the ledge below a window on a Trinidad Street in the old town. Matt was smoking his cigar and we were chatting to our new Cuban friend who told us he was a tour guide and could take us to a waterfall tomorrow.

 

Next thing you know Matt’s signing a contract and we were to be picked up the next day at 10am. Oh and we were to call him Cowboy.

During the night I had drunk a lot of rum. A lot. So a 10am start was not ideal. But we got up thinking at worse it was going to be a car ride, short walk and then lazing in a pool at the bottom of a waterfall. How wrong we were.

Promptly at 10am our guide arrived on his bike, and he had a bike tuk tuk for us to climb into. Ok, not so bad, I mean we weren’t the ones pedalling. Cruising through the streets with the breeze in our hair, it was not actually quite pleasant.

Then, we stopped where there were a whole bunch of horses and we aquired a horse each to lead for a while. Horses? Ok? How hard can this be in shorts and thongs (flip-flops for my non-Aussie friends)? Oh and we also acquired our guides lovely Chica.

My horse did not respond well to me and in the end the guide had to lead both his horse and mine.

It was time to get on our horses so up we got, as gracefully as you can imagine, and away we went.

Matt and I were happy for the horses to just walk along the path but our guide had other ideas. We trotted. We cantered. We picked our way up steep, loose rock inclines and back down again. By now the chafing had begun and our butts we feeling the beginning of some bruising. Poor Matt only had on boardies, no jocks but some very uncomfortable inner mesh.

After what felt like an eternity, we stopped off at a restaurant where we were shown how they extract juice from sugar cane and we got to have a go working the crank. We then got to drink our extract. It tasted yummy, but of course it would; it was liquid sugar.

 

Too soon, it was time to get back on the horse. My horse, who I nicknamed Cheeky, (Matt called his Speed Racer) did not like me. I was indifferent to him but did feel sorry for him as he was doing all the work. How ever it was no walk in the park for me either.

Again trotting, cantering, chafing, bruising; we eventually came to a stop. We arrived at a coffee shop (hut) in the middle of a forest and were shown how they hand grid the beans and make a drip coffee. We got one each (and a free cigar). The man making the coffee was great, we later taught him the rest of the lyrics to “Skippy the bush kangaroo” as the only line he knew was “Skippy, Skippy” after which he would hum the tune.

 

 

A 5 mins walk and we were at the blessed waterfall! It was more like a water drip but there was a 9ft deep pool at the bottom of it so we enthusiastically jumped in. Here we floated for about half an hour, dreading the inevitable – the ride home.

 

To cut it short, neither of us can walk. We have bruised bums and aching bodies. And Matt found a flee in his pubes. Oh and I have a rather disgusting photo of Matt’s bum where he has actual grazing from the inner mesh of his board shorts and I am debating whether to put it up.

So as for the rest of Cuba; we arrived in Havana late in the afternoon and after the most painful customs experience we hopped into a mini-van with our 3 new Kiwi friends. One, Kieran we had met at the last hostel in Cancun and just so happened to be on the same flight to Havana as us. The other two, a lovely couple – Kirby and Luke, he then picked up at the airport and we all caught up for a dink that night.

When we arrived at our hostel they didn’t have our booking! The internet is so bad in Cuba we believed it. They were so apologetic and upset they quickly found us accommodation at a Casa and in no time a lovely lady was there to pick us up and take us to what can only be described as a room straight out of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. But it was comfortable and the Casa Mother was lovely!

Early the next morning we hopped on a bus to Trinidad and several hours later (way more than it should have been!) we arrived at our next Casa and they a) had our booking and b) HAD A POOL!!!!!!

The next few days in Trinidad were spent wandering the UNESCO World Heritage old town, swimming in the pool as much as possible and riding horses!

We also visited Playa Ancon for a nice swim and sunbake!

To get back to Havana we were offered a ride in a private car with two other people for the same price as the bus. Hoping it would be quicker we agreed. Unfortunately it was not quicker and Matt spent the entire time awkwardly rubbing legs with an Italian guy.

The next few days in Havana were spent avoiding the sun as much as possible, visiting the Old Town, Cigar shops, The Museum of the Revolution, napping in our air conditioned room before emerging for dinner and riding around in an old school Chevolet.

 

Unfortunately in Cuba the ATM’s rarely dispense cash and it’s also not easy to change back any Cuban money you have got at the end. As a result we tried to only get out what we needed but ended up with not enough with a few days to go, so we spent a lot of time looking for really cheap food and we found most streets sold these really yummy pizzas for approximately 60 cents. I average one a day, Matt averaged 2.

Now we’re at the airport ready to head back to Cancun. Here we need to work out how best to get some Cuban Cigars through America without getting them taken away so we can bring them home!

The Cuban people are definitely the nicest we’ve met, except when they are ‘not trying to sell you anything but did you know you that today you can get cigars half price if you just walk this way…..’