Hard Core Lounging (Part 4)

After a week of drinking, eating, sleeping and sunning, Cary and I were finally ready for another week of vacation. But we had to go home. Home to cold Toronto, lousy weather, a crappy job, Canadian television, stupid people, bad traffic and the overpriced Leaf tickets. Checkout was at 12:00 p.m. Noon if you will. Even if you won't. Cary and I got up around 9:00 a.m., as we were prone to do and grabbed some breakfast. Our last breakfast. Pedro, our scrambled eggs chef, was teary eyed. Not teary eyed enough though, to offer Cary a trade for my Molson Canadian hat for his lame white piece of shit chef's hat. Cary turned him down and told him to make the damn albino eggs. What was this place anyway? I wanted eggs. Cary wanted eggs. This guy was playing "Let's Make a Deal." Cary and I headed back to the room, changed and headed towards the pool.

The last two days, Cary had gotten a terrible sun rash or paba rash, depending on who you talked two. The salt water from the ocean really wreaked havoc on him. So we spent out last two days by the pool. No big deal. We were closer to the bar. All the better to get drunk. After about 2 hours of sun, we headed back to the room to chill out (literally with our air conditioner set to 10 degrees) until we head to check out. Here were the rules. 11:45 a.m. a porter will come to the room and get your bags. At 12:00 p.m. you have to check out at the front desk. Cary and I wanted to see what would happen if we waited past noon. It was hot, we were tired. We liked air conditioning and T.V., and the free bottle of rum and fully stocked mini-bar in our room. At 11:50 a.m., Cary got a phone call, telling him to get out of the room. He told me they weren't exactly nice about it either. I guess since they had our money, and we were out by the end of the day, they didn't have to be nice anymore. Great! Just great. So we lugged our own bags to the front desk. Cary paid for his long distance calls. Do you know that he had to pay for 1 call at 2 minutes (which he made), and two 3 second calls which the computer makes automatically until it finds a circuit open. So he paid $8.00 for the 2 minute call, and $0.60 for the other two. Weird. Stupid commie pinkos with their backwards telecommunication systems. They'd be better off with two cans and a long string. At least we knew our suitcases would be safe in that back room where everyone from on our package left their bags. It was so safe, that the door was open, not unlocked but open. It wasn't behind the desk. No one was looking after the room. You could easily come from the back entrance, which was open, and get into that room without anyone knowing. But like I said, it was a safe room. Needless to say, Cary and I kept our valuables in my backpack.

Valuables? What valuables? I mean stuff like my CD player, CDs, our money, passports, tickets, and cigars. I bought 4 boxes of cigars, Monte Cristo, Bolivar, Partagas and Romeo and Julietta, for my Dad, and used Cary as a mule for two boxes. We also bought 2 bottles of rum. Nothing like Havana Club 7 year old gold rum. It's totally wicked awesome.

Here's the story. It's just past noon. We've checked out. Our suitcases are in a room unsecured. My backpack is now the most important piece item I've ever had. It has our only exit plan from this communist country. Cary and I carefully plan our sorties for the rest of the afternoon. Cary goes into the pool. I follow, always leaving one eye on the bag. When we go to the bar for a drink, the bag comes to. Lunch was Cary, me and the. In fact, the bag was treated better by the resort staff than either Cary or I. The weather was pretty bad for the last 6 hours or so of waiting. It wasn't raining, but it wasn't sunny and we couldn't go back to our rooms to watch television.

Around 6:00 p.m., we headed to the front desk to get a courtesy room. We wanted to shower and change, for our trip back to Toronto. After a whole day of sunning, you've absorbed buckets of sun tan lotion, which is oilier than the Exxon Valdez. We had to wait for 45 minutes to get a courtesy room. I assumed that we could get a room when we wanted it, but we had to wait for all the other people on the Sunquest tour who got there before us. One stinking room, can you believe that? Once in the room, Cary and I destroyed it. First, the air conditioner was off. So it was easily 35 degrees in there. I guess the other people in front of us live on the sun and like the heat. Once the air conditioner was set to our normal setting of 10 degrees below zero, we took showers. Once we changed and left, the room looked like it had been lived in by charter members of the Hell's Angels. It was a mess and we didn't care. We were told to use our beach towels, but by then, they were wet, smelly, covered in sun screen, etc. So we used the towels in the room. What are we stupid? If there are clean white towels, I'm damn well going to wipe my ass with them.

Cary and I headed to restaurant for our last meal. On the way in we shook Pedro's hand. He was waiting there receiving people. That's where we found out possibly the most important thing in Cuba. Pedro has no thumb. It was the most surreal experience ever. When you shake someone's hand you always expect the wrap around with the thumb. But there was no wrap around, and I looked down to our clasped hands when there wasn't a wrap around. And I saw no thumb, no thumb. It was very odd. That explained why Pedro wrote with a pencil in between his second and third finger. I figured it was because Cubans were communist and commies do everything backwards, but it's because he's thumbless. I mentioned it to Cary as we walked to our table, he said "I know, I know." No more words were shared on that subject.

Dinner was the usually fried fare. We were racing through dinner to make the bus. Got to the lobby on time and the bus was late. Surprise, surprise. We got to talk to some people who we had made fun of all week long. Do you know what I learned? I'm damn glad we didn't talk to them during the week, because it would have really sucked if we had to hang out with them all week. Most of them were pretty lame. Mike and Tina were cool though. We hopped on the bus, stowed our luggage and headed to the airport.

The airport was hell. No, not true. In hell, you don't have to wait in such long lines. The airport in Varadero was more like York University. That kind of fits. Both strive to have perfect socialism. Both give education to all. Both have crappy food and long lines. Both have a lot of drunken students. Cary and I got into line to get our seat. After a 15 minute wait, we got the exact same seat as the flight down. I just reached over the desk and pointed to the seats we wanted, an aisle and a window. No bitching here. No rules here. No, you can't have those seats because I am a loveless person who's only mission in life is to make everyone as miserable as me. I love it. They just affixed the stickers to our tickets are we were off, to another line. We had to pay $20 each as a departure tax. I wonder what they would have done if we didn't pay it, but I didn't want to get throw into a cement room with a plunger, rubber gloves and a real ornery man-hating lesbian. So we paid it. The next line was the line for customs. That's right, you have to clear customs to leave the country as well. There were about 10 to 12 lines open. Each were about 30 people deep. I didn't know what they did in those custom booths, but if it was as meaningful as the ones into the country, it was a stamp, wasting some time, checking your picture, another stamp, wasting some more time and then opening a door by pressing a button. Slowly but surely the lines were closing up. 10 because 8, became 6. After over an hour in line, we finally got through. Not like there was anything for us on the other side, but I didn't want to be in any more lines. I guess this is the real Cuba, lines, lines and more lines.

Cary and I found a place that sold lobsters. You could take the lobster on the plane with you, in a carry on box. It was already quarantined and had papers. I didn't know lobsters made on paper. I thought they made in the water. Hehehe. How about, I didn't know lobsters had papers? What did it write about? The socio-political ramifications of communism on lobsters? Or, Being Red, my shell, my beliefs. The plane came, we boarded and we were ready for the trip back. Tina and Mike, from what I could ascertain, were the last people to clear customs, as the lines had closed so there was only 1 open. They got through as the plane was boarding. You've got to love that.

No dinner served on the plane ride back, thank God. I took two Gravol and was out. I woke up for some sort of snack, which included a really bad sandwich (see Hard Core Lounging Part 1 for reference). I went back to sleep and woke up as we were landing in Toronto. We got to customs in Toronto and breezed through. By the time we got to the baggage claim, our bags were there. Picked them up, headed back to the real world. Robyn was waiting there for us. She is an angel isn't she? Why she picked us up at 2:00 a.m., I'll never know, but she is the best, and I thank her for it.

I should have told her to make sure it was warm. It was fucking cold. It was cold and raining. After spending a week in 30+ degree weather, I was fucking freezing. Needless to say, the heater in Robyn's car was turned to the max. That's the way Cary and I like it, max cold or max hot. No middle ground. Cary was dropped off at home. I was dropped off next. And then at close to 3:00 a.m., I dropped into my bed. So much for Hard Core Lounging.

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