Tuesday 26 February 2008

Def*Jet Skiing....Sore Fanny!!

Yes folks, I mean exatly what that says, I went Jet Skiing and I can personally verify it gives you a very sore fanny! Now don´t start getting all hissy thinking I´m giving away too much information, its the truth. All that bouncing around on waves is not good for you and you will feel it for days and days and days! I could have stood up, yes, maybe I should have, but I was sh*t scared of the damn thing to start with and standing was just not an option!

On the flip side it was a hell of a lot of fun! I´ve had a good time on water this trip which is saying a lot seeing as I´m not exactly the world´s most confident swimmer! I did have one bummy experience though....night fishing! Now I´m not a fisher, I can´t say I´ve ever looked at it and thought "ooh, I wouldn´t mind". Most of the time it looks boring, but when you´re staying with fishermen, you gotta try fishing, and night fishing kinda sounded more fun.

So there we were, with our radio, fishing lines and some snacks. I, being true to form, felt sea sick as soon as the boat engine started. There were about 8 of us in the boat and there was no way in hell I was going to open my mouth and say I felt sick so I tried some deep breathing, tried looking in the boat, out of the boat (none of which worked) and was about 3 minutes away from emptying my stomach contents when someone else did it first! Funny enough I didn´t feel sick after that! I did almost catch two crabs, but I don´t think fishing is for me!

So I´ve said goodbye to the comfort of my Jamaican family and I am now truly on my own in Havana baby yeah!! Funnily enough, despite being just 45 mins away from Jamaica, Cuba couldn´t feel more different. In fact it reminds me a lot of Nigeria! Old buildings with all manner of businesses, shops and homes but you just can´t tell from the outside! You walk past a doorway and get a shock everytime.

I´m in Spanish mode now as well, not gonna be using English much for the next 2 months which is a challenge I´m def looking forward to! I´m in Havana for the next 2 days and then I´m going to try and brave the 15 hour coach journey to Santiago. It´s a hell of a long way, but at least I´ll get to see the a large chunk of the island! (I think I´ll get a flight back though!).

Before I go, a couple more niggles to add to my hall of shame, first is the Maestro card. They say its accepted all over the world, except it really isn´t, at all, anywhere! In fact, if you have a Cirrus sign on your card but not Maestro, that works!!! I´ve been driven to panic a couple of times thinking something was wrong, I´ve wasted money calling Natwest who tell me nothing is wrong, but yet my card still doesn´t work and they won´t accept that Maestro is crap. So, thanks to that I know have to re-organise my funding. Poo. Air Jamaica are worth another mention, true to form on my way to Cuba they showed that they are a truly useless airline!

So, I shall hopefully update later in the week. I´ve got a whole bunch of photos from Barbados and Jamaica to load up and I shall try to do that as soon as I get a stable internet connection.

¡Hasta luego amigos!

1 comment:

Puppet Master said...

Hehe - ya doofus! Your jet skiing experience conjours up many an image. Not many of them nice... Did make me laugh though!

So credit cards and South America - always an interesting one. Mastercard is also most certainly not accepted worldwide. From my experience in Peru, unless you're getting cash out in a bank, credit cards will be eyed with the utmost distrust by any shop or restaurant except the ritziest. Even in one of their biggest food supermarkets in a tourist area, I had to go back home to retrieve my ORIGINAL passport (no photocopy accepted) before they would take payment from my card. You have been warned...

Disfrutas hablando Espanol!