Posts Tagged ‘Cuba’

Both of us slept very well that first night, thoroughly exhausted from the travel the day before. We got up in the morning to head to the main restaurant for our first breakfast.

Here’s the view from our front balcony:

We lucked out that first morning, as we found the groundskeepers who made the rounds clearing up ripe coconuts before they could fall from the trees. Our neighbour already had a deal where one of the groundskeepers brought her fresh coconut hacked right from the coconut. Dhan got in on this deal pronto and had her first of what would be many mornings of fresh coconut water.

We then settled in for our first buffet breakfast at the resort and tucked in:

After breakfast, we headed to the open-air lobby where we met with an Air Canada representative who went over the available daily excursion packages. We chose the trip that would take us to the local small cities of Moron and Ciego de Ávila along with some other stops the following Monday. During our chat, a local male Carib grackle sang sweetly on top of an adjacent table:

We then went for a quick stroll through the grounds of a resort.

The resort had lots of bougainvillea bushes in shades of red, white and purple. A cheery sight after months of drab winter colours back home.

We ended up sleeping a lot that first, catching up on lost sleep from the days before. We had our dinner back at the buffet in the evening, and then hung out in the open-air foyer where we had drinks, checked emails, and enjoyed a singer playing standards.

We then checked out the nightly show at the nearby theater, which was a Michael Jackson-themed dance and music show. Lots of fun! Afterwards, Dhan got in a couple of pics with the performers.

And afterward, we retired back to our room for another restful night.

Looking for a nice warm place to relax in the Caribbean, I found a package deal from Air Canada for a week at an all-inclusive resort in Cayo Caco in Cuba. Never have been to Cuba before, the price was certainly good, and after researching some YouTube videos about the resort in question, we decided to go for it.

It started snowing heavily when we arrived in Toronto. Perfect weather to start a flight to somewhere nice and warm.

This is what it looked like as we were heading down the ramp at Pearson to our Air Canada Rouge flight:

From my time traveling on business on Air Canada Rouge flights, I got us seats with extra leg-room by the second set of emergency exit doors. Well worth it in terms of leg comfort, though there’s still not much in the way of elbow room either. Also no window to speak of, so no pics of the take-off or landing.

We arrived at the Cayo Coco/Jardines del Rey Airport (which goes by CCC) late that same evening.

It was nice being in the open air shortly after landing, and we exited from the back of the plane, and got into the long line up for Cuban customs, along with the passengers from two other flights from different Canadian airlines that arrived at around the same time.

It took a while to make our way through customs, and they didn’t seem to recognize us as a couple, so we each went to the customs agent one at a time. It was also a very long (almost an hour-and-a-half) wait for our checked luggage to arrive, and with three airplane’s worth of passengers and next to no seats in the baggage waiting area around, it seemed to take even longer. But in the end our luggage appeared, and we made our way to the bus that would take us to our resort.

It was there we met Alex, who got everyone on the bus and gave us a quick and friendly lowdown on how to best enjoy our vacations at the resorts. He had a lively trade in selling cold beer to the passengers.

Our resort was the final stop that the bus made, so we briefly got to see the foyers of a couple of other resorts. Our plane left a bit late and we waited forever for our luggage, so there was no welcoming party for us at the hotel, but we were beat by that point and were very thankful to get on an extended golf-cart which took us to our room. It was one of the “regular” rooms, which was sizable, had a king-sized bed, small TV, bar fridge, and a nice bathroom.

After shucking off our Canadian clothes and getting into something more appropriate for the warmer weather, we headed to the “snack bar” (actually a full restaurant and bar) and got a bite to eat. That is where we met the first of the local cats who hang out at the resort.

After that, we retired gratefully to bed.