Cuba Travel — A Virtual Handout
Tonight, I’m giving the first of several presentations at libraries about Cuba. Let me know if you live in the St. Louis area and I’ll send you my schedule.
The DK Eyewitness books are my favorite series for armchair travel, in part because of the excellent history section in each volume.
I promised that I would share practical travel information for US residents who want to travel Cuba. That’s proved to be a moving target — the rules changed again last week!
So, I’m going to take the librarian approach. Here are some authoritative resources to answer questions about travel in Cuba.
The Department of the Treasury is in charge of the sanctions protocol and has the most up-to-date information about the current rules governing US residents who travel to Cuba: Cuba Sanctions.
The State Department maintains country pages for US residents traveling abroad. Their Cuba pages don’t seem to have the latest updates, so use these in conjunction with the Treasury Department information. The State Department has a more pessimistic attitude about Cuba and Cuban travel than I experienced, but it’s worth being aware of the cautions.
A book by an American journalist who lives and works in Cuba
My trip to Cuba was taken under the old rules (two generations old, already!). We took a people-to-people tour where we had a Cuban guide for our whole trip and, also, had many opportunities to witness cultural activities and to talk to Cuban experts. Since this was the only way for US residents to travel in Cuba, there’s a whole infrastructure built around that kind of travel. I highly recommend it for the convenience of not having to worry about the rules and visas and documentation and flights to Cuba (the travel company will arrange all of that for you) and for the quality of the experience.
Cuba Educational Travel was the company that arranged our people-to-people tour for our tour leader, St. Louis photographer Stewart Halperin (check out his next tour scheduled for January 2017). Besides arranging tours for existing groups like we took, they sponsor their own educational tours.
Three books helped me prepare for my trip to Cuba:
- Cuba: DK Eyewitness Travel
- Cuban Revelations by Marc Frank
- Havana Nocturne by T.J. English
Can you recommend other resources for someone who is planning a trip to Cuba?
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The timing for your presentations seem perfect, with so much about the President’s trip on the news lately.
I just remembered that you went to Cuba recently, when I spotted this. We’re planning a trip too, although after reading this, I realise our trip will be quite different since we don’t have the same visa or diplomatic issues US citizens do.
We will be making our own itinerary – we just started reading up on where to go what to see etc. I’m also keen to refresh my memory about Cuban history. I’d forgotten about the Graham Greene book – that’s right up my literary alley!
I’ll be in touch