During the 7 days I was in Santiago de Cuba, I can honestly say I didn’t do much – there also isn’t that much to do. My days consisted of sleeping in late, taking a few cold showers, going out to eat and taking naps. I got into a routine of getting a daily cappuccino at my favorite coffee place, Wen (for only .45 cents), then trying to do at least one thing with my day.

I’ve now learned that once you’ve been traveling for awhile many of the things that use to be important to you stop being important. I just don’t have the energy to care about things that don’t directly impact my trip. As I’m writing this, I’m on day 43 of my trip – I don’t wear makeup anymore or really put that much effort into my appearance. Just thinking about how I wanted to bring my eyebrow dye on my trip makes me laugh – even though they really need it.

At this point, I’m not interested in any tourist activities such as sightseeing or visiting museums. I know this will change once I get back to Mexico but, for now I feel like everything is starting to look the same. The days are hot here and you only have enough energy to do about one activity per day. Not to mention, everything here in Cuba takes about an hour longer than necessary.

On one of our last days, our gang decided to go to the beach. It took about 4 hours to arrange everything from getting a taxi that was big enough for seven people – at the price we wanted – to getting all seven people all in one place. Santiago de Cuba isn’t known for their beaches but, the water was warm like a bathtub and it was definitely more beautiful than any of the beaches in Seattle.

We ended up eating dinner on the beach which, I understood as costing $3 CUC per person. Apparently, it was $7 CUC and we ended up getting into a big fight with the restaurant. The restaurant even tried to take an extra $20 CUC from Lucas to top it all off. I’ve never gotten into a fight in Spanish before, it was kind of exhilarating! In the end, I ended up only paying them $3 CUC.

As we took the taxi back into town, reggatone was blasting as we all sang along. I looked around at my new friends and all I could do was smile. I started to think about the beginning of my trip in Havana when shit hit the fan. I honestly never thought things would turn out like this. The one thing that I’ve learned from traveling is no matter how bad it gets, in the end everything always ends up okay.

I definitely had a different idea as to what my trip in Cuba was going to look like but I’m glad it ended up the way it did. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Now I return to Mexico to explore the country. I can’t believe I’m only a little over a month in on my trip. So much has already happened and I know there’s so much more to come.