Month Three Recap

Havana, Cuba July 2012

Where We’ve Been

We spent most of the month in Colorado, with Mexico and Cuba lumped into the last week.

The Highs

• Playing games with the kids at Roundup River Ranch, and letting them dress me up and paint my face for Ugly Counselor Dinner.
• Photographing Lisa and Ryan’s gorgeous wedding, where everything ran smoothly and the light always seemed perfect.  Made my job a whole lot easier.
• Setting off on the international portion of our journey – finally! – and hitting my 29th country.  Yes, I keep count.  I’m weird like that.  I have a goal to keep the number of countries I’ve visited equal to or greater than my age, kind of guaranteeing that I’ll keep traveling somewhere cool each year.  Since turning 29 in June I’ve been behind, but now I’m dead even.  I should be up to 30 by next week.  Life is good :)
• Visiting friends of ours who are housesitting in Mexico.  So nice to see friendly faces!
• Not running out of cash, losing our passports, getting busted by the authorities or causing an international incident in Cuba.  Phew!  Photos are coming soon, I promise.

The Lows

• Making the transition to drinking and using only bottled water for the next several months.  Not having potable tap water always makes brushing your teeth more complicated.
• Getting totally gringo taxed in Cuba.  We usually get a little bit of this when we travel, but in Cuba it was absurd.  Not cool when you are keeping a close eye on how much cash you have with concerns of running out (US ATM cards don’t work in Cuba, of course, and neither do credit cards.  You have to bring everything you need and plan accordingly.)

Things I’ve Learned

I’ve learned a whole slew of things from our five days in Cuba, but that is really better left to another post.  For now, I’ll stick with the simple truth that you can never pack too much underwear.  When you can’t do laundry for a while it’s super nice to know that even if you have to re-wear that T-shirt for the third time, you can at least have clean underpants.  Totally worth any negligible extra weight in the backpack.

What’s Up Next

We’ve started August in Akumal, Mexico.  Next we fly down to Peru, and will either be staying in Lima or Cusco – decision pending.