Time in Cuba and Roatan

Time is a funny thing.  It speeds up and then slows down.  A moment can last a lifetime.  A look in someone's eyes as you close the door on them or the gaze into another’s eyes as you see recognition and connection.  While diving a 45 minute dive can seem forever or be over way too quickly.  A moment snorkeling with dolphins in the open water can last a lifetime. These last two months on Roatan have been infinitely long and terribly short.  I kept meaning to write, but time slipped into the future.

I got older this last month.  I had a wonderful birthday.  I went with my birthday buddy Max on his first dive.  I was surrounded with amazing people and got to hear from friends and family.

Also, I moved into my 3rd place in Roatan, back to West End.  And as my 3rd month here came to an end, I needed to leave the country to renew my visa.  My plan was to go to Guatemala.  See Copan along the way to Antigua, San Marcos and finally to Tikal.  But anyone who knows me knows plans can change in a moment’s notice.  As I was sitting at my friend's tattoo shop a yogini came in (they do yoga at the tattoo shop naturally).  The yogini was talking about her upcoming trip to Cuba since there was a time limited direct flight from Roatan to Cuba.  Cuba, I've always wanted to go to Cuba.

So I went to Cuba 3 days later.  Cuba, where time stands still yet is moving forward at a rate unknown.  Stepping into Cuba was like stepping into the past.  Streets were filled with beautifully colored vintage cars.  Colonial buildings crumbling in majestic watercolors, street corridors went on forever until they hit the sea and people filled the streets.

Cuba is her people.  My waking hours were filled with meandering through the 2 cities (Habana and Trinidad), going to galleries, reading "Islands in the Stream", eating, listening to music, a little dancing and conversing with Cubans.  In Habana, I sat with a bike-taxi business owner for a couple hours.  In Trinidad, I celebrated a 54 yr old's birthday with a coffee, a climb to the church of San Francisco de Asis and a visit to a revolutionary museum.  I ate dinner with a girl my age at her "basic" (her words not mine) house with her family.  I stood in streets, cafes, restaurants and stoops talking to people about life- from the mundane, political, cultural and philosophical. I received relationship advice and a few offers of marriage.

If Habana was a 50's watercolor picture, Trinidad was stepping further into the past- a pastel version of it.  Trinidad was life through rose colored glasses. The first night walking through the streets I heard Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose" filtering through an open door.  I lingered outside until the song was over.  And then I saw the sign "Por el futuro del Pasado- Trinidad 500 anos."  For the future of the past. The second day in Trinidad I rented a bike and rode the 4 km through the countryside to a beach called Las Bocas.  There's so much more to explore of Cuba.  Someday, in the future, I will go back to Cuba and hope that the past will still linger romantically in the air.

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I recently spent 7 hours floating in the Caribbean waiting for a boat that had failed to come and pick us up after our dive.  4 of us went to the sea mounts, 25 miles off the coast of Roatan.  A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean seafloor that does not reach the surface.  They are formed by extinct volcanoes.  This seamount was an unexplored on and it was a beautiful dive.  We did the dive according to plan and came up after 50 minutes to our surface marker.  No boat.  About 45 minutes later we saw a boat far away, our hopes soared but then we watched him circle around us and apparently didn't see us.  We attached 2 other lines to the sea mount after that as a safety precaution.  We floated on our dive gear in the open sea near the 3 markers.  Time stood still, there were frigates and boobies flying overhead, turtles swam and surfaced around us and small jellies floating all around us.  My roommate Mel and I said many times that it was a dream and that we would like to wake up now.  We consistently checked our watches about every hour to half hour; time ticked by and sped up.  An hour would fly by.  We discussed all possible options- whether to swim to shore (10+ hours away), what to do with switching currents and the possibility of spending the night in the open ocean.

The sun was setting.  I said "I think it's going to be a beautiful sunset" to which I received a few "shut ups".  The sunset was epically beautiful.  As the sunset, someone said "I don't think they are going to find us" to which I (in my most authoritative nanny voice) said "That is NOT going to happen.  Then moments later Mel said "There's a boat, I'm not joking there's a boat!"  As the sun set we saw a boat, the boat was perfectly circled by the sun as it was sinking into the ocean.  The boat was coming directly towards our GPS coordinates that had been left with the owner of the boat.  We were exactly where we were supposed to be, sunburnt and dehydrated.  I never thought for one moment that we wouldn't be found and that nothing aside from a few jelly fish stings.  I was fully present in those 7 hours and they passed by quickly.  It seemed that it wasn't long at all and eternity as well.

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Time depends on how we are connected to it.  The key is in the connection- with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us.  The type of connection is how we react, act and perceive what is happening around us.