Lived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from 1972 to 1975. Couldn't go off base into the rest of Cuba so we made the Navy/Marine community HOME.
The best thing that happened to me while there is NO ONE knew I had an identical twin. Not one person asked me "Which one are you?". For the first time in 28 years, I was Ellen. I like to think I was reborn in Cuba. I can imagine this sounds kinda weird to any who hasn't been in that situation but believe me.....it was like a Julie Andrews moment at the top of that mountain.
I went to Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Haiti for R & R when the station aircraft was headed that way. Got to fly in a C-54 that was in the Berlin Airlift until we changed to C-118s...both aircraft were pretty kewl. I thought Van Johnson would come out of the cockpit anytime when I was in the C-54 with the sling seats on the side.
Other than that, we pretty much did stuff like you would in any American town. Speed limit was 25 and we didn't have any fast food places (they now have a traffic light and a McDonald's) and pretty much shopped out of the Sears catalogue. Oh, almost forgot.....called the dump Sears and Roedump. You never knew what you'd find there. And for an old hand dump picker from Maine...it was fertile ground.
The best part of living there is meeting my bestest man friend there in 1972....he and his wife and my dh and I ran together...best friends. They retired to AL in '74 and we retired in '81 to FL. My DH passed in '89 and I was widowed for 6 years when his wife decided she wanted to be on her own. He waited one year (he was really in mourning) before he contacted me.........we've now been married almost 15 years. We would go back to Gitmo in a heartbeat if we could.