Good, and clean...and dry, tra-la-la

An invasive North American accent, which I could hear clearly across the beach, from 60 metres away, told her female companion that she was in a bad mood! I thought to myself, I actually haven't heard that expression for a long long time. Come to think of it, who's choice is it that you are in a bad mood? Nobody else's but yours. You are the only person in control of how the mood effects your day, being, existence! What the fuck is a bad mood anyway? It's like people getting offended? Grow up! If something or someone happens to annoy you, it's completely in your control to NOT get in a bad mood, especially if it's a small thing or things, like I had the other day. I actually can't remember when I let a bad mood adversely affect my day, it's somewhat juvenile actually. Get a fucking life woman, you are on a Caribbean island, on the beach in a bikini, get over yourself, how bad can life be right now? I went to the immigration office to get my tourist visa renewed, as I have said previously. I had all the documentation necessary, so there was no reason to feel it wasn't going to happen. I felt nervous for some strange reason, and when I got ushered in to the office I sat there like I had been a naughty school boy, waiting for a punishment to be dealt out by the headmaster, a feeling I know only too well. It brought back Michaelhouse memories, but these are serious dudes, in uniform, with rank on their shoulders, not a pseudo alcoholic, squash coaching, underachieving maths teacher with a chip on his shoulder. I kept telling myself to try and look as calm as possible and don't fidget, c'mon man, you're 49 years old, get a grip. I felt like I had sweaty palms. At one stage there were 5 uniformed officials all gathered around me, yacking away in higher grade Spanish. Anyway, the fellow was very polite, kept calling me Sir, but took his time to redo my visa, as is Cuban custom...no rush. I tried to remain as patient and composed as possible. All told I was outta there in 15 minutes. I thanked him kindly, wished him a jolly nice day, and was on my merry way. Off to the beach, admin done! I still cannot get over all the wonderful stuff that has been turning up in my path. When I was in Trinidad, I visited the beach there called Playa Ancon, remember where the woman asked me for security money to watch my bicycle. On that beach, I was sitting in the water with my hands under the sand, feeling for things and hoping I was going to find a big diamond ring someone had once lost, but all I found was broken coral bits.

Tomorrow is travel day. Not a biggie, just down the coast, to that little place called Playa Coral. It's probably 20 kms from here. I rode there the other day with Penny, and there are a couple of pics on my Facebook page too. I shall have a day or two camping there on the sandy shores. It's apparently really great snokelling, such a shame I didn't think to bring my mask from home, I mean, I have loads of space. It may be a little while til I am back online as I will be camping for a while yet, until after Eldorette arrives, and will by then be West of Havana somewhere, heading towards Vinales. I do have to go through Matanzas, so will have an opportunity then to share this blog after my camping next to the ruins of Playa Coral. The trouble with camping is there is no way to recharge all the electrical stuff, so tonight may be spent getting everything ready to go and last for a few days until I find a socket somewhere I can use. Once I got used to Varadero, it hasn't been that bad. I guess it's like learning the ropes again, where to go, where to avoid, which shops to buy at, etc. the beach is really nice, and seriously long. I'm guessing it's 20km end to end, maybe more. The sea is the mix of every blue and green ever named, and it changes depending on the sunlight. Typical Caribbean colors, just amazing. Warm too, not like Camps Bay painful. The waves lap, as opposed to thunder onto the beach sand, so it's really fun just to lie knee deep in, just floating there on ones back, without the risk of getting dumped and loosing ones costume, after doing a double twist with a pike and four rolls up the sand, past all the shells. Tumultuous applause. It's sunset time, not missing that... I had an interesting night in the howling wind and beach of Playa Coral. I got offered food as I sought shelter in a small brick room, adjacent the toilets as it started to rain. Myself and 3 Cubanos were waiting it out, them, all smoking, one offering me his neat rum out of an old water bottle and the mosquitos having a fabulous time all round. I thought I better contribute so pulled out my iPad and started up the Apple Music playlist. The food was to be delivered at around 6, consisting of fish, rice and tomatoes. Until then a few chipped in and we sat around merrily in the gale and occasional rain drinking strong piña coladas. At sunset I had food, and 3 flea-bitten dogs sitting around hopefully waiting for tit-bits, anything would do. I assumed by sharing my 3 fish heads amongst the 3 I was buying some sort of guard dog loyalty for the night. All of a sudden it was pitch black and I was alone, bar my 3 mangy companions. They were very sweet. One local also stayed in the ruins on the beach, not out of choice but he was just very poverty stricken, poor guy. He nonetheless had full on chats with me in Spanish, I'm not sure he even knew I had no idea. When I departed I gave him 2USD worth of coins as a gratitude, I think he thought it was payment as companion and security chief for the night, but it was not.

Needless to say, post dinner, which wasn't too bad except for the admin of picking my way through the fish skeletons to just pick off the meat, it was very edible, the dogs agreed. It was unwritten but I had myself 3 mobile alarms for 12 hours. Every small noise which eventuates out of the night, caused these to erupt into action, and as I don't sleep well at the best of time, my 11 hour confinement to my Up Cloud 2 seemed more like a sentence of days, rather than restful eventuality. Come 5.45, I felt so shattered that then I actually could have slept for 7 hours. Packed up and departed to Matanzas I decided to stay over at the place I stayed on the 2nd November on the way out for my Eastern Loop, and was welcomed with a very needed dose of sweet coffee and some rolls with awful processed meat sausages, but anything was now fit for a king. I suggest a long afternoon nap and a big dose this evening, not due to the long 14.5km ride this morning, or that I am going to need my strength for the 50km tomorrow to Playa Jibacoa, but just cos I'm in the red. Overdue by one day. A funny story to end, and I can only laugh at myself, and did. When I arrived in Varadero I was very low, if not empty on body moisturizer, so decided to purchase some at the local supermarket on day 1. I found a bottle, 500ml no less and gleefully day in and day out I liberally applied it to all parts of my body. It's characteristics were that of a Nivea cream, often difficult to apply so one had to really rub it in and even then, I often had difficulty to get it absorbed effectively. I used it after every shower and between each beach visit. I had spent a lot of time in the sun, but my skin seemed to be getting drier by the day, eventually starting to look and feel like rice paper. I even started applying it to my face as it dried up. Eventually towards the latter part of my visit there my skin started to burn when in the sea, ( I mentioned that previously) so just applied more moisturizer. The penultimate night my skin was so bad that I actually covered myself in Everysun 30 before I could sleep as that was the only thing I had which seemed creamy enough to actually moisturizer my body. After some pondering, a weird thought crossed my mind. Perhaps this "Jabon Manos" moisturizer was something else, after all it was in a funny shaped container with a plunger top, not the traditional cap or lid. I exited from bed and went to my English Spanish translation app which I have on my iPad. "J...A...B...O...N. M...A...N...O...S", was typed in to reveal, 'soap hands'. I had, in my haste and non Spanish brilliance, bought and been applying hand soap to all areas in the most liberal fashion, that only had me with a small amount remaining in the bottle. No wonder I looked like an evaporated moisture less desert twig...but I smelt and was squeaky clean. I needless to say had an emergency visit to buy all the face and body moisturizer I could summon and again, applied liberally, and may have to for the indefinite while. I may have even found myself getting into a bad mood, but alas, I'll leave that to others to do. Everybody dies, not everybody lives, no matter how wrinkly and dried up, the inevitable is on course.