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Thursday, January 6, 2011

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Across the Atlantic

Now it's time to speak about the adventure itself.

The first idea was to hitchhike on a boat to go from France to Canada,
but we quickly understood that Canada isn't a common destination for a sailing boat leaving from France.
What we didn't know was that July is the middle of hurricane season, meaning that it's harder to find a boat crossing the atlantic, but we kept in mind that everything is possible.
We strongly believed that through will and talking, asking, exchanging with people, we will always find solutions.
We found this boat, a brand new one, sold to a Cuban marina. Its two skippers were searching for two crew members, lucky us!
We only had to pay for the food, it's one month of 3 meals a day, that's normal.
Our job, to stay on the deck and watch the boat's direction for three or four hours a night.
We left on the 15th of July with David, the captain, and Christophe, the other skipper. Our new home was a 75 foot catamaran, a Fountaine Pajot, destined for daily charter in the calm waters of the Caribbean sea.
A few days later, the ocean gave us a first and unforgettable gift:
a group of dolphins came to wish us luck, playing with the boat, swimming around the boat, we could see their eyes trying to look in our souls with each jump.
The wind was against us in the beginning as we pushed towards Porto Santo, our first call - a small island belonging to Madeira Island, Portugal, close to the Canary Islands. We arrived after one week of pitch and toss.
We used a lot of gas while we had the wind against us, so we stopped to fill up the tanks, and take some more ice.
This island was very interesting; a volcanic island, the sea level is completely dry, nothing grows excepted from man's hand, but if you climb a bit in the mountains, then it becomes green and florescent.
Then we left for two weeks of sea, clouds and sun, alone in the sea.
An eternity of water surrounded us as spent hours watching at the ocean, looking at each wave growing and disappearing, dreaming about each story that unfolded in the clouds...
Two weeks after leaving Porto Santo, we reached the shore of St Martin. It was nice to walk on solid ground, to have an open walking surface larger than 200 feet. It was even hard, our bodies rocking by themselves.
By the time we arrived on St Martin, Mr Dean, the big hurricane, began showing his power in the middle of the Atlantic. According to reports, he was projected to take the same road as us.
Captain Dave decided to head north to let Mr Dean run below us - a great decision, the hurricane didn't even bother us.
The sea gave us many more gifts: first her wonderful sunrises and sunsets. Then the sea seemed to explode, giving us two wonderful fishes, a big mahi-mahi, I think the best fish I've ever eaten, and a big red tuna. The sea gave us some of her children, we thank her for allowing us to share an unforgettable moment, a life experience...
A week later, we reached Cuba. Back to a walking life.
The elements gave us an incredible experience.
It was a great lesson to learn that nothing is empty, that happiness is as simple as enjoying every single second of life anytime, anywhere...

Cuba

We saw the Cuban coasts 39 days after leaving La Rochelle,
on the 22nd of august, we arrived in Fidel Castro's country.
For the walking liberty, we will have to wait a bit more, we arrive after the customs working hours, and our captain decided not to call them, to give them the surprise.
So we are not allowed to move from our boat till the day after, first alert to make us understand that the authority won't be there to help us...
The next day, after a complete search of our boat, and after having burned our food and confiscating everything that wasn't our personals things and didn't belong to the boat, such as pans, chairs, dishes,..., and that we wanted to give to the fishermen next to us, the customs gave us a visa of one month.
Happily for us, Aubin knew somebody who live in Cuba, she was able to welcome us for a period of time, we said to the custom that we were going to live in a Cuban's house, but instead of giving us a family visa, that is required for staying with a cuban family, we received a tourist visa, that only allows to stay in hotels, or in a rent-a-room, from the beginning something was wrong.
But anyway, we enjoyed our new open field, we landed on Varadero, a very touristic but wonderful place around 75 miles from La Havana, then we moved to Matanzas, where we spent some few days with Aubin's friend, and moved to with some people to La Havana and then Pinar del Rio, then Vinales, the region of the cigars.
Vinales really is an incredible land, the red dirt, the big palms tree, and the tobacco fields, all these surrounded by these semi-circulars green hills.
Then we went back to La Havana, where we spent the rest of our trip in Cuba, a friend of Aubin's friend welcoming us.
To move in Cuba, we used the very well organized hitch-hiking, ruled by the government, some people being employed to stop the cars and let the hitch-hikers go in. Hitch-hiking is reserved for Cubans and students, so we didn't speak loud and try not to get noticed and everything went good.
We spent most of our time trying to find a boat to leave Cuba, that's how we met Pascale, a french girl, captain of her boat, that helped us like a mum could do.
In Cuba there are two currency, the cuban peso and the peso convertible, the first one is for the Cubans and the second one for the tourists.
1 peso convertible is almost 25 cuban peso.
Meaning that for a tourist, life is 25 times more expensive, if only this money went to the Cuban directly, but it's to the government that this big money goes, and believe me, tourism brings a lot of money.
We learned how to use cuban money, wallet feels so good about it,
we learned as much as possible to live a Cuban do.
After one month we had to renew our visa for one more month,
problems arrived when cuban authority learned that we lived in a Cuban's house, without being under control of the government.
They took our passport and put us in kind of unstrict jail.
Fortunately our friend Pascale helped us, she said to the customs that we will stay on her boat, and she helped us finding a boat to leave the island.
We met this guy, an American, captain of a trimaran, he was going to Key West or to Mexico, of course everybody knows that it's illegal for an American to go to Cuba.
At this time our english wasn't as good as now, we misunderstand each other...
We left with him direction Key West.
Cuba was a great experience, it's really a country apart, unfortunately people suffer from the government decisions.
Some ideas are good, free medical care and free university are some of them, but people are trapped, they can't leave the country, they know only what tv and newspapers under government's control says.
Fidel claims everywhere the difference of Cuba compared to the rest of the World, but in his country, nobody has the right of difference...

Key West

When we understood that the captain was going to leave us without declaring us to the customs, we where hesitating about going back to Cuba while he was sleeping.
Finally we let the wind blow us away from Cuba.
We landed in Key West, the 3rd of October, the first thing we see is an American flag, right at the place our feet touched for the first time the American ground.
We are in front of our destiny, we don’t know anybody, we just have a contact, a friend of Pascale, in St Petersburg, 250 miles further from Key West.
The wind pushed us to Greggery, our angel, he’s a pedicab driver, and he offers to welcome us.
His wife is Cuban, and when he saw us with our big bags, and recognized our Cuban water bottles, he knew that we needed some help.
After one week of illegal staying in the USA, thinking about the best solutions for our situation, we decided to go say hello to the customs, and they received us nicely, they just let us pay 1100$ for illegal arrived in the USA, and gave us a six month visa.
After a while we lived in a trailer with Greggery.
We met both of us nice girls and began sweet relations,
We enjoyed our stay in this kind of paradise at the extreme south of the continental USA.
People living in Key West are mostly eternal dreamer, searching for a calm and funny way of life, with warmth and sunshine…
It’s so easy and so fast to feel like home on this small island of the Caribbean.
We just had peaceful life for months…

Across USA in bicycle (Seb)

After realizing that hitchhiking across the USA would be almost impossible, I (Sebastien) decided I would bike to Vancouver, Canada, where we might be able to hitchhike more easily.
Aubin decided to stay in Key West and later buy a car to meet me in Vancouver.
It was the first time I tried to ride so many miles, and I felt it was a great experience.
I left on the 10th of january 2008 with my new friend, a giant cypress hybrid bike, a trailer, a burley, my bag-pack, and supplies to fix the bike in case of problems.
Since it was winter, I decide to follow the Gulf of Mexico, the border of Mexico, and then the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
I reached New Orleans in 20 days - sleeping in free camping grounds, homes of very nice people, church yards, buddhist temples, even behind a bike shop...
I arrived in New Orleans just in time for the Mardi-Gras - a crazy event!
With all my heart, I want to thank the people who helped me on my journey, you're like my angels.

inspired wanders

Thursday, January 6, 2011

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