The pale “V” still cuts across the top of my feet, but now it’s joined by another white line, one that runs across the base of my ankle. It’s the beautiful combination of a flip-flop tan and a yuma shoe tan. In the beginning of our trip I was shamed by some Cuban friends into not wearing my comfortable albeit ugly walking shoes. They took me to an open-air shoe market near the Malecon and helped me pick out a pair of much more fashionable black, strappy wedges. The wedges are cute to be sure, but when my flip-flops broke two weeks ago and I had to choose between mud-cladded sneakers, my yuma shoes, and the wedges I made the practical decision and reached for my walking shoes. Now I wear them throughout the day, but when the sunsets I trade them for the wedges to stomp around the streets with friends walking to a restaurant, club, or the Malecon. At the end of every night, when I squeeze my swollen feet out of my black, strappy wedges the skin on the tops of my toes is raw with the promise blisters. As I sleep during the night and walk in my clunky yuma shoes during the day, the skin heels itself though only to be rubbed raw again the following night. Small patches of skin have calloused on my toes, and while not particularly pretty these spots are nothing compared to those on my legs.
The pink, itchy bumps cover both of my legs, and it looks almost as if I’m suffering from the chickenpox. The older bites ones no longer itch, though they’re still visible as slightly grey and purple spots. The ones on my leg I don’t mind. It’s the one on the side of my pinky toe, on my knuckles, and the one in the middle of my face that really get me. These I can’t hide, unlike the bruise on my chest from where my body was slammed against our boat while snorkeling in Veradero. After about an hour of swimming in the open water without fins I had gotten tired and swam back to the boat. The waves had grown slightly larger since we had originally set out, and when I tried to pull myself into the boat one wave chivalrously pulled down my bikini’s top. I immediately fell back down into the water with it in hopes re-securing it, but when our guide saw this he assumed I was too tired to climb back into the boat so he grabbed me by my arms and pulled me up right as a strong wave knocked the boat. The yellowed skin isn’t sensitive anymore, although I’ll admit the ribs beneath felt almost dented when the bruise first appeared.
A small scar cuts horizontally across my right kneecap, marking where another small adventure went slightly awry, where my knee and a jagged limestone rock collided into one another. Needless to say the limestone rock won. We were in Baracoa and had just climbed the summit of a local mountain with a vista of the entire peninsula. While the rest of the group was climbing down, I continuously fell down the slopes, into trees, and, unfortunately, into some limestone rocks that permeated from beneath the muddy earth. Crimson red blood slowly dribbled from my kneecap, though by the end of it I wasn’t the only injured one, nor was I probably the worse off. One student took a wrong step on a patch of sleek earth and nearly slipped off of a cliff! I guess I should be grateful the rock caught my knee and me. Like many of my memories from Cuba, the scar will probably fade over time, though to be honest I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t. I’ve always held that scars make for good stories.