Countdown to Cuba!!

I'm flying out to Cuba via Mexico and Costa Rica in less than two weeks!!! I’ve had five months to prepare for this trip – weeks and weeks of Spanish lessons (am still abysmal - but it was fun)and hours watching Stargate in Espanol with English subtitles (as a bonus I also feel absolutely confident I will be able to deal with the huge alien bloodsucking scorpions when they descend onto Mexico City). I also roped Linda into doing Salsa lessons (which almost ground to a halt day one when she realised she would have to actually TOUCH people she didn't know – but 3 litres of hand sanitiser later we were fine).

Although the ransom fund is pretty healthy I haven’t had as much luck auditioning for my hostage negotiator team. The most enthused volunteer (who appeared to have the right qualifications) was later exposed as having lost hostages in all his three training scenarios and come to his own grisly demise in at least one of them. So I am looking for volunteers. A common kidnapping practice in Mexico City is to keep the victim over 24 hours so they can return to the ATM to take out the daily limit the following morning which, Randy optimistically pointed out, would take care of my first night’s accommodation….

Very very excited ..driving my staff mad with frenzied versions of La Cucaracha in the hallways and the hourly number-of-sleeps-to-go-tally ….