A summer filled with sun, sand and rum

The strangest thing about traveling is that with every destination you tick off your bucketlist you probably add another five destinations. No? Just me?

I've recently turned thirty and I took an island holiday where I reflected on my life and future plans. Obviously I found myself daydreaming about my future travels. Needless to say, i have a whole host of destinations added. With the Rand's volatility I've had to be creative about the destinations that I give preference right now. I am breaking one rule because this destination has been high up on my list  since I was a little boy. It's been near impossible (due to financial constraints) to get there and it still is. It's becoming increasingly popular and my worry is that it's going to change and become more expensive with time.

I'm going to Cuba y'all!!

Getting there 
This is the longest route I've ever taken to get to one place. But I've had to be creative about getting there. Two weeks ago I decided that I'm going to take this trip and I had to find a way to get there. But I also needed to be in NYC for Pride on 26June. All flights to NYC were ridiculously expensive. I remember reading somewhere that Qatar is going to start flying to Atlanta and I wondered if they had enough bums on seats and that's how I found fairly cheap flights to ATL via DOH. It was the cheapest by ZAR2000 for other ATL flights and ZAR5000 for JFK/NWR. And last week my heart broke when I found cheaper flights to NYC. Agh no need crying over spilled wine.

I will stay in Atlanta for two nights and meet up with old friends. A bit of clubbing at Bulldogs like its the olden days again. From Atlanta I will fly to JFK on Delta using my miles. All I paid was $5.60!! Score!

The fun begins when I leave NYC for Havana. I'm flying with Aeromexico via Mexico City to Havana. The flight is costing me almost as much as the Qatar one. I've never been to Mexico City and this is a perfect opportunity to use a long stop to explore the city. So yeah I'm going to walk around the city during my stop 😍😍😍

There are many ways to get to Havana. Here are the few I found:
* from New York via Nassau in the Bahamas. I'd add a day or two in the Bahamas and enjoy the picture-perfect beaches.
* From New York via Panama City using Copa Airlines. Note that you need a transit visa for Panama City.
* From Johannesburg via Paris on AirFrance
* Via Toronto
* From Johannesburg to São Paulo on SAA then use Copa Airlines to get to Havana via Panama City
* Aeromexico via Cancun

I plan to go to Havana, Santa Clara and Trinidad. I will use the bus to get around. It's about $8 for the shortest trip. Santa Clara is a small city but it is known as Cuba's trans community haven. I really want to be there for a weekend and experience it myself.

VISAS

I don't need a transit visa for Qatar, luckily. I may need to get a visa for my return given my very long stop so I can maybe explore Doha and rest before my flight home. I haven't done much research on this but it's similar to the UAE visa process, possibly pricier.

I have a ten-year USA Visa tha still has a few years left in it.

The nice thing is that I don't need a visa for Mexico if I have an American visa.

I need to get a travel card for Cuba. Word on the Internet is that I can get it at the airport before my Havana leg. I've decided to go to the Cuban consular office here in South Africa (Pretoria) next week and get the travel card from here. It appears like a simple and quick process. Will blog about it once in done.

Accommodation
There's tons of homestays/ hostals on Airbnb. I haven't booked any yet but I've identified a number in Havana, Santa Clara and Trinidad.

Hello from this side

Hi guys

I hope you are well. I'm sorry that I have not been blogging for a while now so I thought I should 'check' in and let you know that I am well.

You were probably wondering if I've traveled anywhere else since India. Yeah, I did. I went to the USA over new years and I (obviously) didn't blog about it. I just feel  like there's nothing new to blog about about the United States. But here we are today, weeks later, with a quick review of my trip.

I left the country on the 28th of December for New York. From there I went to Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC. The main idea was to spend New Year's Eve in the Big Apple. It was a childhood dream of mine. I have always wanted a winter New Year. The Xmas lights all over the city fascinated me.

You guys would know by now that I'm a culture junkie. I love all things culture and the holiday destinations that I've chosen before reflect that. But once a while I want to take a trip to a place where I don't need to do research about various things such as underground gay bars etc. And this trip was just that.

Getting there

This trip wasn't preplanned, as always. So I had to be creative about how i was going to get to the US. There was no way that I'd have taken the nonstop SAA or Delta services at such a last minute. My trusted friends, Kayak and Skyscanner, recommended that I take Emirates to New York  (JFK) via Dubai. I'm even embarrassed to tell you how little I paid for the tickets. It was so affordable that I bought a fully flexible ticket for my return, in the event that I felt I needed to stay longer.

So how was the service? It was alright. No, really, it was alright. Nothing worth a song and dance. The cabin crew was quite disorganised during the service. The food options ran out too soon (not their fault). It just didn't appear orderly to me. All four flights. The food was standard plane food.

But of course I had to make it exciting. If you fly cattle class the airline is kind enough to sell you baby bottles of Moët so that you also feel important. They were $15 a pop and they gave you a proper glass too and sometimes they would bring it with a fruit platter. I was happy. On one flight I got complementary champagne, on tap, from the business class bar on the A380.

The aircrafts were really good. They fly the B777 from JNB and the A380 from DXB to JFK. The aircrafts have free wifi for 100MB. You can buy more for  $1. This, for me, was impressive.

Had it not been of the bubbly, aircraft and wifi I really would not rate Emirates anywhere among my top 5 airlines. But I'd fly them again.

New York! New York!

After a two hour stop over and a 14 hour flight I arrived in New York. Oh the flight was delayed due to a baby that was very sick whose family had to be offloaded for precautionary reasons. And of course this being a US-bound flight they brought a team of security experts to sweep through the family's sitting area before we were cleared to leave. 

I was staying at my friend's place in Hells Kitchen for a few nights before NYE. I must admit that nothing else is blog-worthy from here on. This was not my first trip to New York so I didn't do much tourist activities. I just drank and ate myself fat.

We went to brunch at Sylvias in Harlem and later to Harlem tavern to drink and look at the gorgeous Harlem boys *looks for Chinese fan*.

We walked the Brooklyn Bridge on NYE. That was a nice experience. Then went to look at street art in Williamsburg.

And then there were the drag shows in the evenings and bar crawling. Oh yeah and the restaurants were also amazing.

PS: The Dollar was at R16 - something  so I didn't have money to shop.

Internal Travel

So from New York I went to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, Baltimore and DC. I used a combination of the bus and Amtrak train service. I'd recommend the train for the longer distances and a bus for the shorter ones like NYC-PHL.

I will see if I can blog about Philadelphia soon. It really is worthy of a post.

Till next time...

MelM