As a wedding gift, Gavin’s parents treated us to an awesome family vacation in CUBA! And to make you all jealous I’m posting some fun pictures.
This is the beach outside of the hotel where we were staying. One morning Gavin and I got up really early and watched the sunrise.
The ocean was warmer than the pool, and other than one rainy (ie: 2 rather cool) days, the whether was very hot and an awesome change from February in ON!
You can see a little bit of our sunburn on this picture, but the flash mostly washed it out 
If we took a bus, we found ourselves on a much bigger beach (read: they drop us off on the start of the sand and we walk for more than 5 minutes straight towards the water without getting wet!) After we went for a swim, I buried Gavin in the sand.
The sand is coral, so it is very white. And as Gavin soon learned, this kind of sand embeds itself right into your skin. At least three showers that involve lots of scrubbing might get rid of it all!
I still found sand on my skin back in Canada! (Which is actually illegal - you get fined in Cuba if they catch you taking the sand out!)
On two of the days we rented some old rundown motor scooters to explore the island we were on (Cayo Largo). Boy were they fun! Here you see Gavin driving me around, but we took turns! They could actually go pretty fast - considering they were wobbly and had no windsheilds.
One time Gavin and I got stuck in the sand and stopped to pull it out, and we couldn’t get it to start again - meanwhile, Gavin’s dad, brother and cousin didn’t notice us fall behind for quite a while….
Eventually they came back though, and Gavin’s dad (who has considerably experience with vehicles that don’t like to start) got us going again!
My favourite part of swimming on the ocean is the giant waves. Blake kept being thrown onto the beach though, and he was pretty scratched up - not to mention the little girl he almost knocked over when she was in his flight path…
When we visited “the village” (where all the hotel employees for the island live) and they have a turtle farm there - we met a huge sea turtle name Maria, who has been popping out little turtles he whole life - and she’s 60 years old!
We got to play with her newest babies - and boy were there a lot of them!
We also went on a “Sunset Cruise” where we went snorkeling and we visited a natural pool (ie: a big shallow area in the ocean) and we visited Iguana Island!
It was a treacherous looking island made up of coral. One woman tripped and was bleeding for the rest of the day :S
But there were some very huge, and rather friendly Iguanas there! I’m pretty sure that they live entirely on the food that tourists bring them on the tour.
Remember when I said that we got up to watch the sunrise - that’s because we were burnt so bad we couldn’t sleep!
Anyway, this is how I was peeling when I got back. Pretty isn’t it?!
February 28th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Nice pictures. I especially like the scooter.