Cuba Post-COVID 19

Last year, for Christmas 2023, we returned to Cuba for the first time since our time in Caibarien and Remedios in early 2020.  We had such a good time we returned to the Melia Cayo Coco again for Christmas 2024.

Photos of  2023 HERE and of 2024 HERE.  And for comparison purposes, our last pre-COVID stay in Caibarien HERE.

In 2023 we enjoyed ourselves but had chosen to return to resorts, as opposed to casa particulars and hostals, for mobility and other health reasons.  

But as a result of these last couple of trips we're re-thinking our travel enthusiasms.  Life changes and all that messy stuff.  Last year we were enjoying our first mid-winter break in three years while in the past, for 30+ years, we went two or three times each winter.  Typically once to a casa particular, a Cuban bed and breakfast, and twice to a resort to decompress from work by lying down and reading for two weeks before getting up and going home.  So I guess we were just so pleased to be there and enjoying the weather that we forgot all about how tired we were of resort holidays.

This year we kinda returned to where we were when we swore-off resorts and moved to more (very mildly and just in comparison to resorts) adventurous travel in Cuba.  We were bored less than a week in and even a day spent delivering some surgical equipment to the hospital in Moron didn't help, much as we enjoyed time in a red 1952 Ford Crown Victoria convertible.

Photos of the drop are HERE .  How and why we came to have two suitcases full of medical stuff only healthcare workers usually have access to can be found in my post re. Not Just Tourists which is HERE.

The resort, both trips, was fine, some wiggy shortages like one set of salt and pepper shakers set for the entire poolside snack bar, but the fries were good so who cares?  LOL

Portugal is definitely on for April, but that's less travel than a cottage experience really.

We are exploring, or will do if I get my shit together, a reunion trip to Florence with friends we shared an apartment with fifteen years ago.  Might work better for us.

But we're also trying to get the grand-kids interested in some travel and one of the possible enticements is a subsidized trip to the Cayo Coco hotel we loved for a decade starting in 1993 when it opened as the first resort on CC, so who knows.  But if that does go ahead it may just be our last trip to Cuba, hard as that is to believe.  

 

Bit of a shock to the system just thinking about it really.