Yes, we're home!

Loren picked us up at the airport, in a nice warm car.  We were glad to see him, but not glad to see blowing snow, with a blizzard warning.  

Our flight there was a horror with a very small plane and no leg room, although we had paid extra for it.  I was in the middle seat and so cramped up that I could move neither my legs nor my shoulders, so absolutely no way to read or relax.  David was on the aisle and every person or cart that went by knocked him on the shoulder.  I had to keep reminding myself that "what can't be cured, must be endured".  Then an hour and a half bus ride to the resort.  

I did not know this, but off the north shore of Cuba along the middle third of the island is an archipelago of islands.  If you have a chance, Google this on a fairly large scale map, and look for Cayo Sta. Marie, which is where our resort was.  I'll look as well, and see if I can find a site for you.  We had to fly into Santa Clara, which is just about in the middle of the island of Cuba, and the closest airport to the islands.  It's a fairly small airport, which is the reason for the small airplane.  During the 90's the tourist potential of this string of islands was seen, and a major construction project resulted in a causeway--38km long.  It evidently received world wide acclaim for the engineering of the project, but the disintegration of the USSR occurred just before completion, and the whole Cuban economy was devastated.  It took years to recover, so the development of resorts was slow. 

Our resort was only part of a much larger resort.  The other half was called "Memories".  Memories has over 1100 rooms and can accommodate about 3000 guests at any one time.  Our resort, "Royalton", accommodates a maximum of 215 guests, and is for adults only.  Tomorrow, I'll try to get a resort map in the mail to each of you, as well as a brochure for the various excursions that could have been taken--for a price.  Once you get your hands on them, I should be better able to tell you what we did and what we experienced--including pictures.

One down side to this all was that we are reasonably sure we were exposed to bed bugs.  These are very common in the tropics and very, very hard to control, so-for the most part--are tolerated.  This means that all of our luggage went straight into the garage, where it will stay for about 48 hours, as freezing is one of the recommended strategies. This happened to us once before, and Loren says he experienced it as well.  Freezing worked last time--here's hoping.