Finally. Sweet, Spicy Cooba.

Because they say it that way. The don't say 'keyouba' like we do.

No, they pronounce it in a most outlandish and disturbing manner.

'Cooba.'

But it's sunny, the booze was free and the cigars were cheap, so who really gives a fuck?

Yes, kids, it's time for Captain Chuck to tell you all about the approximately three percent of Cooba that he saw, which, naturally, was either the 'good three percent' or at least a reasonble cross-section of the island and its 500 years of history.

Apparently some guy discovered Cooba way back in

(partial deletion due to boredom)

but then Kennedy tried to invade them in '61 and they had a big pissing contest over some missiles, then... well, I guess that's it. The Soviets went tits-upsky, and Cooba was broke all of a sudden, so they all put on their good shirt and said, "Hey, Canada! Hey, fat German Speedo enthusiasts! Come on over here and we'll play salsa for you, and tell you it's salsa from Cooba every time we do!"

The food was bland, there was a douchebag from Montreal there that attempted to fuck everything in Cooba that looked like it might have been concealing a vagina somewhere, and I got a moderate sunburn, but it was fun.

We rode horses.

But they don't have big Canadian horses there, to fit my big Canadian ass. No, they had Negrito (that was the horse's name, not a racial slur. Translates to 'Blackie', fo the liguists among you). He was almost as tall as a regular horse, but if you walked around behind him, he sort of disappeared. He was one narra-ass horse. I was never in danger of falling off, but Jose, coming up behind the horse and whacking it on the ass with a stick to make it run, did not exactly instill confidence in me. And Giggity-Goddamn, did it hurt the next day. Not my ass, which I expected, although I should have realized that my ass is very well padded. No, it was everything else. Pretty much anything you use to hang on to a skinny horse for dear life, hurt. But it was still fun, and for fifteen pesos, how can you go wrong? Insurance? Helmets? For pussies, I say.

Yeah, we went to Havana, too. Lots of old buildings and sweet-ass old cars. It's bizarre, because all the shit went down in 1961, so that's where the line is drawn for Yank cars. the latest model American car I saw was a 1959 Thinderbird, and it was FUCKING SICK. All the other cars are Japanese, European, and a fair few of them were Russian. Lada AND Skoda, would you believe! The rental cars were all Peugeot 206's, all brand new. I'd've liked to take one out, but I've done too many Gran Turismo rally races in a 206... it would have gone badly.

Shit, what else did we do? Spent half a day walking around this little market trying not to buy anything on the four-page list of endangeres species... and the rest of our vacation was pretty much all...

Let me tell you about the Varadero Peninsula. It's not really an island. Get it? Of course you do. Anyway, The V.P. is 20 kilometres long, 1/2 a kilometre wide, and is almost all white sand beach. What do you think we did? Nothing. We sat on the beach and read books. We swam ocasionally. We made the odd foray back to the bar for beer (me) and mojitos (Tanya). The beer's okay down there, too; it's pretty much a straight-ahead lager. Like Canadian, I suppose, but with a little less on the back end. It's refreshing, though, like Corona, say, or Beck's. Good beer.

Except in the evening, of course, they had these little shows they put on. Sometimes it was a trivia thing, or one night it was a magic show, or whatever. Doesn't matter, but the M.C. killed us. Slaughtered us with our own laughter that all the European people didn't get. Because it was this grimacing Cooban dude in a white suit, and every time anything happened, the DJ would put on 'Axel F', the theme from Beverly Hills Cop, and he'd do this little dance, hoist up one eyebrow, and leer at the audience. He was a goddamn stitch. We didn't watch the shows, we just waited for this guy to come back out. Hilarious. He was like a slightly ghetto Ricky Ricardo.

So that was Cooba. I'm quite sure there was nothing else on the entire island worth seeing or doing, and I say that with a factual assurance that can only come from years of spewing utter horseshit and KNOWING, not thinking but KNOWING FOR ROCK-SOLID FACT that you're still gonna buy it. Oh, you'll talk about me behind my back, but you'll come back. You always do.