Thursday, January 1, 2015

The adventure begins before it officially starts

  As Joe Sparrow and I begin our next adventure which is Winter time in Cuba, we had to fly to Nassau, Bahamas to catch our flight to Cuba since there still is no public flights to Cuba from the United States. We left Fort Lauderdale on New Years Eve in a rush to get this adventure started. Arriving in Nassau, we discovered that every room on the island was booked. This wasn't suppose to matter as we were planning on immediately jumping on another flight out to Cuba. Cuban flights only happen twice a week so we were going to be in one spot for awhile. I found a room online however after booking a room and taking a taxi to it, I discovered Hotels.com changed the date and we were 3 days early. El Greco Hotel was very accommodating however and even though they were completely filled, they put 2 roll away beds in the lobby and let us sleep there. This may sound like no fun but the other thing we didn't know about was Junkanoo. It is a festival that begins at midnight and continues until noon. We took a short nap and was back out in the middle of the parade. Yes, only 18 hours into this adventure and we are in the middle of a parade much like Peter Fonda and Denis Hopper in Easyrider.
 The music was outrageous!
                                 The floats weren't motor driven so they were pushed ......
and pulled with barely enough room to squeeze through the narrow streets
And some floats were actually worn and one person would "carry" them the entire parade route
I was able to get right in the middle of the parade and photograph ( and dance )
getting shots front and center
Of course Joe was busy doing the same
The crowd participated also. Even the youngest brought their instruments to play along.
There was dancing in the streets
                                                             and floats in every shape and size
Some floats had "mini floats" to compliment them
What a great way to start the first 12 hours of our journey just to get where we want to be for our Great Cuban adventure- stay tuned for more!!!!!