I once booked a trip to Cuba because of a 48-hour Expedia deal.

The price was exceptional, my boyfriend and I had nowhere else to be, and the booking window was closing fast. It seemed spontaneous and slightly rebellious, which somehow felt like reason enough.

Off we went.

The plan was adventure. Cuba promised art, food, history, cigars, vintage cars, and cultural immersion. The resort was just the base camp. I don’t do pools. Lying in the sun for hours strikes me as aggressively boring, and I had absolutely no intention of spending this trip doing either.

What we didn’t know — because we booked before asking even basic questions — is that Cuba runs largely on U.S. dollars or local currency that visitors are expected to arrive with. As Canadians, we had neither.

To find an ATM, we needed to travel to another resort.
Traveling to another resort required cash. Hilarious.

So there we were, trapped at base camp with nowhere to go and nothing to do except, apparently, the pools.

For six days, I spent roughly twelve hours a day rotating between two mediocre pools. I would bob for four hours at a stretch, moving just enough to stay inside the narrow patch of shade cast by a single palm tree. Then I would switch pools and repeat the process.

A grown woman with a passport and a return ticket, bobbing in circles like it was a punishment. It was. And I had paid for it.

Eventually, an unemployed stranger named Patrice lent us twenty dollars.

Nothing encourages self-reflection quite like being rescued by someone with no income.

That twenty dollars got us to Havana. Havana was extraordinary. Art everywhere. Vintage cars. Cigars, music, architecture, and a kind of history that feels present rather than preserved. Worth every cursed minute spent chasing palm tree shade.