I’m turning 30 on august 13th. Damn, it’s so crazy… I always thought 30 was so far away, and yet here it is. I wanted to do something super memorable to mark this occasion, so I decided to take a trip… to Cuba. I’ve wanted to go to Cuba for hella days. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard so many good things about and it seems like such a fascinating country, but there’s one little problem… going to Cuba is illegal.<\/p>\n
The US has a trade embargo on Cuba, and US citizens aren’t allowed to spend money on Cuban goods. Since traveling to Cuba basically means that you’ll spend money while you’re there, traveling there is illegal too and is considered “supporting an enemy nation” or some crap. Luckily, people have figured out loopholes here and there for going. Americans fly to mexico\/canada, and then fly to Cuba from there. Luckily, Cuba doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stamp your passport, so as long as you can avoid getting duplicate stamps from mexico\/canada, you should be able to get away with it. So, I went ahead and bought my tickets to Cancun.<\/p>\n
the days leading up to the trip were very busy, so I had pretty much no time to get ready and it was only the day before that I had to scramble to get everything done. The main problem was the money situation. Usually I just use atms where ever I go, but you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use the atms in Cuba w\/ an American card. So, the only thing I can do is take out money beforehand. Damn. Well, I guess I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just get the money from the atm in Cancun before I fly to Cuba…<\/p>\n
With only one hour before all banks close, I remember that I only have a 500$ limit for atm transactions. Omg… better rush to the bank now!! How much should I take out? No clue. Flip through guidebook for an “average daily spend”, and it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say. Crap! I randomly decide on 75$ per day and rush to the bank to get cash. Ugh… now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna spend the first part of my trip walking around w\/ over $1,000 on me. How sketchy is that?! But it gets worse. Dollars are the worst kid of money to bring to Cuba because there is a 10% extra fee for changing them. I am SO screwed.<\/p>\n
Then, when I start compiling a list of what I need to get, I realize that I forgot my passport and my backpack down in San Jose. DOH! Luckily, my brother volunteered to drive it halfway up so I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to drive all the way down there. I spend the next few hours rushing around trying to frantically buy everything I need. And then pack. And then load mp3s onto the ipod.<\/p>\n
In the end, it’s 2am by the time I go to bed. I have to be at the airport at 6:15am the next morning. Plus, I only have tix to Cancun so far, since buying the Cuba portion is not possible on credit card. There is the definite possibility of being stranded in Cancun for a few days. There is also the definite possibility of running out of money while in Cuba since there is no way of getting more. Ugh. everything is so messed up!!<\/p>\n
*v<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m turning 30 on august 13th. Damn, it’s so crazy… I always thought 30 was so far away, and yet here it is. I wanted to do something super memorable to mark this occasion, so I decided to take a trip… to Cuba. I’ve wanted to go to Cuba for hella days. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard so … Continue reading “all messed up before it even begins…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cuba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":860,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}