Sat Jun 02, 2018 12:00 am
It is more difficult now because the people-to-people thing is tightened up. You have to go with an organized tour group. Blech. That also tends to make things very expensive. Add to that if you are going for a while you must bring all cash and even in the all-inclusives your US credit card won't work. The USA is a country of 300 million people, enough adventurous tourists would go there regardless of subpar tourist infrastructure - as a matter of fact, that could be a selling point. But having to lie to your own country's authorities to get there (admittedly, nobody checks, but still...) and having to pay for EVERYTHING in cold hard cash is a pain.
And for those excoriating this new travel to Cuba b/c dictatorship, I mean, really, Cuba ain't Sweden but it isn't North Korea. When I went a year ago I noticed no jack-booted thugs, no antipathy towards the US, just people in Havana going about their daily lives. As I said in another thread, Cuba is a relic, think Belarus with nice weather and palm trees and beautiful women, and nobody in the US is stopping anybody from going to Belarus.
usxguy wrote:
Americans are also smarter than most travelers... why would we welcome tourism to a country that still murders/jails/beats gays, forbids interracial sex, and jails journalist.
I honestly don't know what you are talking about.
murders/jails/beats gays? Maybe in the 70s (even then I doubt killing gays, but Fidel was a homophobe) but it has gotten much, much, better in Cuba, and compared to, say, Jamaica, I'd rather be gay in Cuba any day of the week.
Forbids interracial sex? Huh?. The Castro regime actually did an awful lot to overcome the racism and prejudice that was rampant in Cuban society under Batista, where blacks were second-class citizens because of, oh well American investors in the tourism industry. (IT *was* the 50s). Whatever you want to about the Castro regime, that is one area where you have no grounds to complain. Show me where you got this forbids interracial sex from. I am really intersted.
Sorry to turn to politics. I guess because of the world we live in, any airliner thread touches on politics. Suffice to say that if the US (you know, the land of the free) allowed its citizens to visit Cuba the way it allows its citizens to visit the Dominican Republic, those forays into Cuba would have been much more successful.