La Habana, Cuba

Check in - Check out - Check in - Check out - Check in - Check out, aaaaaaghhhhh!

It´s with an enormous Jet-Lag after 3 different flights and 22 hours of travelling from Puerto Rico I walk through customs in Havana, Cuba. Who would of thought that it would take so long when the islands are practically next to each other. If it wasn´t so damn expensive to fly a direct flight, I would. Please Cuba and USA, try to get a long sometime so we can open up the possibilities between the countries, like come on, it was 50 years ago, let it go!

But I try not to think about that now, because I´m in Cuba! I walk through ceveral security controls and 20 questions later I´m out. Grabs the first cab and head for mi casa, where my good friend Mikael is waiting. The first thing I do when I get to the house is taking zip of real Cuban rum. I take a deep breath and yeah, the trip was totally worth it!

We remained in Havanna for three nights at Casa Yolanda y Roberto. A great place with very nice staff and good service and clean, nice rooms, close to the city and a little dog, Dodo, who chewed on everything. I did´t try any other casas and I won´t have to, this place is the best and I recommend it to everyone going to Havanna.

The days in Havanna consisted of hanging by a pool, walking the streets, eating Cuban food, drinking Cuban rum, exploring the nightlife, a concert with Los Van Van at casa de Musica, and lots of other special experiences that I will never forget. Besides Mikael, another friend of mine, Umberto, was also in Havanna at the moment with his Cuban girlfriend Mayelin and their baby, Laura. Umberto is also a skydiver sicnce like forever, he´s acually the guy I did my first tandem jump with and now, 4 years later, I´m here in Havanna, drinking Havanna Club with the man, you never know how things end up in life....

The thing that got to me the most was the way the country looked, acted and how everything works. It´s so different from rest of the world. You wont find another country like Cuba, I promise. The revolution and Castro has really left it´s mark, everywhere! And the gouverment wants to control everything, and they do, thoroughly. Here´s some examples.

• If you own a house in Cuba and move to another counrty, the house goes to the gouverment, and you don´t get one peso, it´s their property then
• The cars in Cuba are very popular, if you have a car, you can´t sell it, but you can let it run in the family. If you would be able to buy a car, a model, for example a little Fiat from 1970-80 will cost you about minimum 4000 CUC (4500 USD)
• Prostitution & drugs are highly illegal and are very strictly controlled. It occurs but you don´t see it much
• Cuba is one of the worlds most poorest countries, and you notice this right away. The buildings hasn´t been refurbished since the revolution, the streets are bad and broken. A normal monthly work fee is 20 CUC, a beer costs 1 CUC, you do the math.

Visit the follow adress to read more about Cuba: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuba

But despite all the hard life in Cuba you can´t help to be inpressed and moved by the peoples daily good attidud and their joy for life. It´s like they somehow accepted they way they have to life and just do it and makes the best of the situation, I think thats why I liked it so much.

So now, enjoy the pictures. I only have a few ones right now, more will apper later at the website.

Next stop, Holguin... Adios...

The long but interesting way from Puerto Rico to Cuba

It´s Valentines day, the 14th of February, the clock rings at 5 am, telling me to get up, pack my shit, take a shower and head out to my ride. After a beach party, that is not exactly what my body wanted to do, but the next adventure was waiting so up I went.

Arrived at the airport around 7 am, my flight was 12pm, all I can say about that is thank god for the free Wi-Fi I found in a bar ;-)

I boarded the plane, hoping to get some sleep on my way to Miami, to then change flight to Cancun, Mexico, and then finally to Havana, Cuba. But I didn´t get one minute of sleep because of the cool couple sitting down next to me. They were an elderly couple from Nokomis, near Saraso, Tampa (Florida), and we ended up talking all the way from Puerto Rico, the most interesting talk I´ve had in a long time! It turned out that the guy, whos name is Kit S. Kapp is working as a map writer, and is still working at an age of 70+, respect! And because of his work and interest in all countries he has been almost everywhere in the world, and the places he haven´t been to, he knew about, he even knew about Uppsala, and hes wife, Valerie Kapp, had when she was younger, met two guys from Uppsala on a trip somewhere, and apperently they were really nice and great, of course, like all people from Uppsala ;-)

I was so happy to meet him. The stories he could tell about all the places he´d seen, experienced and loved, didn´t have an end, he could almost tell you everything about every place in the world. He randomly picked up a magazine from the seat of the plane and on the front there was a picture of an Indian woman wearing a special outfit. He knew exactly what kind of culture she belonged to and the story about that, so cool! I mean, he was the guy I want to be when I´m 70, still healthy and able to travel around the world and know everything, he was a Travel-God!

So thank you, Kit & Valerie, for choosing a seat next to me, you made my flight the best ever!

Inflight to Miami from Puerto Rico

Saturday Night, the beach party @ Vega Baja Beach

Saturday Night, the beach party!

The last night of my stay here at the boogie has come. To selebrate and to close up the boogie they´d arranged a party at the beach. With a DJ, playing music all night long, free food and beers from Medalla. A raffel, with alot of prices to almost everyone from all of the sponsors. I did not win a thing, by the way.

And as a tradition one of the skydivers attending the boogie, who also is an iceartist, created something out of a huge block of ice. Appertently he does this on every boogie he attends, with a new sculpture every time. And when it´s finished he saws a hole through it and then you pour the Rum through it and one person drinks it. An ice shot of Rum through an ass, cool! The rum is never gone!

So this was it! I had the best time ever at the boogie and I´m absolutely coming back next year, but not alone. I´ll bring a bunch of swedish skydivers with me then, this boogie is far to good to miss.

I had to leave the party quite early because I had to get up at 5am to go to the airport. I had 3 flights devided into 20 hours before i would reach my next destination. First to Miami, connected flight to Cancun, Mexico and finally hopefully arriving in Havanna, Cuba!

Buenos Noches todos.....

Pura Vida Skydiving @ Vega Baja

Here´s some pictures from the skydiving that also took place at the boogie ;-)

It was 4 days of skydiving. 3 planes - Super Otter, 200 jumpers, two landing areas, the beach or at the dropzone. The beach was like a 3 min drive from the dropzone. If you wanted to land there there was a shuttle waiting for you to take you back to the DZ, lovely!

The landing area on the DZ wasn´t the best but that was because of the runway and the landing area was a forest a couple of weeks before the boogie. They had to move the location of the boogie, just some weeks before because of some administration problems. So they worked and worked, cut down trees, dug up the roots and made it to a runway in like 10 days. Amazing!

That´s skydiving spirit!

The manifest was without doubt the best I´ve seen. How the managed to organize everything so smooth and easy, without any, as far as I experienced anyway, trouble at all.

They were always so happy, never stressed, and got everything right. A very good interacción between the manifest and the load organizers. As soon as something changed, like the landing pattern or the landing direction, we knew about it right away. BIG UP FOR THEM!

The mentality is very different from a normal jump day back in Sweden. Here´s no stress, not many people actually care how many jumps they do a day, the just jump when they feel like it, packs in a normal pace, and just hang around mostly, enjoying the sweet feeling of RASTA!

I managed to do 18 jumps myself including one high altitude jump at 21.000 feet, awsome!

Look, enjoy and long for next years Free Fall Festival in Puerto Rico

More pictures will appear at www.sweetliving.se shortly.

Be Cool, Be a Skydiver!