• Return Hell
• Part 8 - Return
• Part 7 - Snorkeling
• Part 6 - La Gran Piedra
• Part 5 - Day Trip
• Part 4 - On again, off again
• Part 3 - Injury
• Part 2 - A Day in Paradise
• More under Adventures in the Caribbean...

• Despot
• Pat on the Back
• Detroit
• The Stupidness pool
• Photography
• Interestingness rant...AGAIN!
• Pizza
• Remembering
• More under General...

• First Tournament
• First Round
• New Driver
• November
• In The Zone
• Broken Driver
• Closing Stag
• Slump
• More under Golf...

Part 4 - On again, off again

Ok so Monday we do the usual, get up, breakfast, yada yada. I go to find the guy outside the gate with the glue. He isn?t there, but there are several other people trying to sell me cigars. Now we have to find our tour rep to see what's up with the Santiago trip. She's in the other hotel. There are two hotels in the complex, the one we were at, Club Amigo Los Corales, & the other one Club Amigo Carisol (not as nice but close) which was mainly French Cdns. & Russians (Ours was English Cdn.s & Germans). All the signs were in French at the other place. Phhht! I get enough of that crap at home!! In the other hotel there is a guy at a little booth making cigars. I haven't seen the guy at our hotel yet so I make a deal with him for 20 hand rolled Panatelas, (almost Coronas) (about 7?? long, ?? diameter). I'm to pick them up on Friday morning before we leave. Anyway, the tour rep says that the trip is a no-go not enough people have signed up. We can however, get a taxi for $60 for the round trip, and if we want an English speaking driver, for an extra $20 we can have him all day & he can give us the tour. She rips up our pre processed visa slip & we walk back to our hotel & get the front desk to book the taxi. She asked if we would pay her then & we said we would pay the driver (as our tour rep suggested). OK, now that that's out of the way still no glue at the front desk or post office, maybe later they say. Off to the pool for a bit of relaxation. Around the pool we meet some other people who we get chatty with & before you know it it's lunchtime. We all leave at separate times to go to lunch but the grill is on again it seems so we meet by chance at the grill & have a bit of a party. There was table service with wine & it was 2:30 before you knew it. The Cuban staff is kind of looking at us to hurry up, so we leave for the pool again. Another afternoon of deck chair lounging and tasty rum drinks.

The only shortcoming that the pool area had was that there was no Banyo (bathroom) nearby. The only bathroom in the entire place that we could see, other than in your room, was in the lobby near the dining area. So, at some point later on in the afternoon, Nancy went back to the room for obvious reasons & there was a note slipped under the door. Yes the Santiago trip was on now, as they had just had a new group in at another hotel & they now have enough people signed up. Great, we've just booked this frikkin taxi. Oh well, we'll see if the tour rep can cancel for us. By chance we see the tour rep later that day & she says that the trip is apparently off again, as we didn't get enough people again. They now need 12, not 10 or 8. Good thing we still have the taxi booked.

After dinner we happen upon the tour rep AGAIN, & now the trip is back on it seems. We get her to cancel the taxi & we're in the tour bus with a group of other Canadians. Good thing we didn't pay in advance for that cab! At dinner we had some liqueurs, a lethal mixture of rum & some other stuff. They didn't agree with Nancy & she got quite sick that night. I was afraid that we would have to cancel the trip the next day, but after driving the porcelain bus briefly, she was fine the next day.

Filed under Adventures in the Caribbean, Sep 13, 2005
 

NEXT ENTRY: Part 5 - Day Trip - Added on Sep 18/2005