Mai Perso - Travel adventures

Kicking the tires in Cuba | May 25, 2012

Hopping into the Time Tunnel for this trip. Yes that black and white vortex that takes you back in time. I know it’s telling about my age when you reference the Time Tunnel, oh well…
We took off form SFO at dark o’hundred, for a four stop hop to our final destination in Havana. The travel gives me time to transition from the 160 MPH speed at work over the past few weeks, to a place where time stood still half a decade ago.
This is a MaiPerso scouting trip. I would love to take a group of my buddies for a motorcycle trip around the island, riddled with Mojitos, Music, Cigars in a colonial setting. It will be an adventure of a different kind. Not the riding challenge, no survival of the fittest but an exploration of a world, now in the news and soon to become history.
We have no plan, didn’t book hotels, and head over there wishing to see Cuba the way the locals experience it.
Using the flight time to list out the things I want to experience. And then compare notes as we get through them on the ground.
We have an added bonus. We will be spending time to and from, in Panama. We have spend an hour or two in transit there before, but this trip we will have some time to actually check it out.
The thrill of this adventure is great. For one, visiting places like Panama and Cuba, ads the smell, dialects, sounds, tastes and social vibe to my lexicon. Next time I read a book or see a movie or hear a story about Che, or Fidel, or a news bit about a tropical storm hitting the islands, I have a bother dimension of senses to go with it.
I can’t forget the first time it rode down the Rue du Soleil, the famous road that runs down France and ends in a fork in the French riviera. Left was Cannes and right is Marseilles. All I could think of was a scene from Casino Royal or some other scene from a James Bond film. Building out your sensual database feeds into everyday’s mundane experiences.
Cuba isn’t waiting for me, it probably doesn’t even know I’ll be coming by for a coffee and a Pork stew. But I am by now, dying from anticipation to our encounter. And you know what, I just know that we are about to fall in love. The sign is on the wall. The same one that carries Che’s infamous silhouette…