TRIP TO CUBA

Havana, Cuba, Sunday, May 31, 2015

A couple of days ago it was announced that the Obama administration had succeeded in taking Cuba off the list of states that support terrorism. Congress did nothing to prevent it. Surely, this means it must be less illegal than it used to be to visit Cuba.  For U.S. citizens it actually still is illegal (I think) unless they have a special permission for research, studying or group tourism. Traveling on a European passport means, however, that questions of illegality do not need to concern us.

Trouble free arrival in the evening after long but uneventful flights from NC to Toronto and then more than 3 hours from Toronto via Valdera to Havana on Air Cubana. George arrived from Belfast 1.5h after me on Air Canada.  Obtaining a tourist carta in Toronto was easy and only cost $20.00 (on Air Cubana, free on Air Canada). --- George is an old friend of mine and a great very easy-going travel companion. We traveled together to the Caucasus last year where I gave lectures on US foreign policy in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. The previous year we traveled to S.E. Asia (with my giving lectures in Vietnam, Camboida and Thailand). And we also went to Uzbekistan some time ago and again I gave a couple of lectures. ---

At Havana airport, the usual crowd of hustlers awaited us offering various taxi rides into the center of Havana. We settled on one quite reasonable taxi. The road from the airport to the Melia Havana Hotel was rather dark and unlit. While ocassionally tress, houses and people came into view they all remained rather in the shadows due to the dimly lit roads. But there was plenty of life in the streets we passed by though people remained in the semi-dark and we couldn't see any shops at all.

Suddenly, after a half hour ourney, a rather grand hotel came into view. No it wasn't ours as I hopefully enquired from the taxi driver, it was the Promenade. But just round the corner was the Melia Havana, not bad at all either. In fact, it's a rather nice and very modern hotel. I was surprised that George should have selected it; he usually goes for the basic ones. He had been in charge of making the bookings from Belfast as I couldn't do so from the U.S. Neither the flights nor the hotels could be booked from a U.S. based computer as I found out a few weeks ago. Despite the relaxation of tension and rapprochement in Cuban-American relations recently - the establishment of formal diplomatic relations seems only to be a matter of a few weeks - booking a simple flight to Havana (even from a destination abroad) is still not possible when one is based in the U.S.

After check-in there was just about energy left for a quick stroll through the rather splendid hotel (including a huge and most impressive pool). Exploring Havana has to await tomorrow.