Can you still travel to Cuba? Yes. And a Fort Myers chef can get you there. – The News
Posted!
- 1 of 8
- 2 of 8
- 3 of 8
- 4 of 8
- 5 of 8
- 6 of 8
- 7 of 8
- 8 of 8
Silence engulfed us in long, eerie stretches.
The occasional Lada sputtered past, as did a lone tour bus, its seats speckled with a handful of riders. But mostly this usually bustling corner of Cuba was quiet.
Standing in the heart of Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion, surrounded by the towering faces of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, arching my neck to see the top of the star-shaped obelisk memorializing Jose Marti, I could hear a pin drop.
Three days after President Donald Trump tightened travel restrictions to this island nation, the impact was already reverberating.
“Oh my, where are all the buses?” Gloria Jordan said to no one in particular.
The Fort Myers chef and Cuban-born travel guide spread her arms out in front of her, motioning to the vast and almost empty plaza.
“This is usually all buses from the cruise ships. It’s usually all full. My God.”
More: Cuban travel restrictions impact Southwest Florida businesses
More: Trump administration halts cruises to Cuba under new rules
Similarly desolate scenes played out across Havana. The usually bustling seaside Malecon, the colorful Plaza Vieja, the whimsical and mosaic-lined Fusterlandia — all were quiet last week.
On June 4, the Trump administration ended the most popular forms of U.S. travel to Cuba, banning cruise ships and a heavily used educational category called “People to People” travel in an attempt to cut off cash to the island’s communist government.
Cruise travel from the U.S. to Cuba began in May 2016 during President Barack Obama’s opening with the island. It has become the most popular form of U.S. leisure travel to Cuba, bringing 142,721 people in the first four months of the year, a more than 300% increase over the same period last year. Cruises offered a simple, one-stop, guaranteed-legal way to travel.
CONSIDER SUBSCRIBING TODAY: Help support local journalism
That appears to be over, with an estimated 800,000 cruise passenger bookings affected, according to industry group Cruise Lines International Association.
I hadn’t come by cruise ship, or even for “educational” purposes. I’d come with Gloria, whose company, Gloria’s Cuban Humanitarian Travel, secured our passage under the lesser-known, and still 100% legal, “Support for the Cuban People” category.
It’s one of 12 travel categories still permitted under the new Trump rules. Others include journalistic activity, sports events, religious activities, research, and humanitarian projects.
The “Support for the Cuban People” category is the same Gloria has used since starting her travel business more than two years ago. And it’s the same one she plans to continue using for the travel groups she has booked through spring 2020 and beyond.
The category is meant to boost Cuban entrepreneurship. Gloria’s groups don’t stay at government-owned hotels. They don’t dine at state-operated restaurants. Every show we saw, every artist we met and every mojito we sipped was created by a privately-owned Cuban entity.
Our spending was meant to boost the people of Cuba.
Gloria was strict about it, too.
“No no no!” she yelled at my husband, who’d ducked under the blue awning of an Old Havana cafe to grab an espresso Sunday afternoon.
He came out, eyes wide.
“That’s government,” she said, tisk-ing and shaking her head. She pointed him to an alleyway and a set of beige umbrellas.
“You can get coffee there.”
Over at Fusterlandia, a sparkling wonderland of mosaics created by Cuban artist Jose Fuster, Gloria chatted with a manager as a rainbow assortment of 1950s Chevys sat idle along the street, not enough tourists to ride in them.
A man in a blue shirt shrugged when Gloria asked what they would do without the cruise ships.
More: Gloria Jordan — Tour guide to the soul of Cuba
More: La Trattoria Cafe Napoli has our critic (still) in love — JLB in 3 Tweets
“We’ll do what we always do,” he said. “We’ll get by. We’ll figure it out. We’ll close some days if we have to.
“This is not new to us. This is life in Cuba.”
Our group wasn’t the only set of Americans I saw. I ran into a few others who’d secured educational people-to-people visas before Trump’s ban took effect, and who were thus grandfathered in. A group of women at Ernest Hemingway’s house in Havana’s San Francisco de Paula ward were traveling on humanitarian visas organized through a volunteer program.
But the vast majority of visitors I encountered were European, Asian and Canadian.
“It’s stupid. Every other country is free to come and go as they please,” Gloria said as we passed a family of Italians loading into a red Chevy Bel Air convertible.
“But the United States of America, land of the free, that’s the one that cannot come? Why? So stupid.”
While Trump’s current restrictions don’t directly impact Gloria or her company, they are having rippling effects for Cuban travel in general. Gloria said air carriers including Delta and United are canceling and limiting flights due to lack of interest and a misunderstanding of the new restrictions.
She called a booking agent at Southwest Airlines and was told she could still buy tickets from Tampa to Havana. “There’s nothing stopping me from making the transaction,” the agent said. “You just need to secure the right visa.”
Gloria has always secured the right visas for her groups. It’s just as easy for travelers to do so themselves, with $85 and a few clicks on a computer. But it’s those extra few steps that trip people up, and that made cruises so alluringly convenient.
“The cruise made it easy. But they only stay for, what, 12 hours?” Gloria said.
“That’s not even a taste.”
Her tours take travelers all in, to world-class restaurants built in former vegetable oil warehouses, and to speakeasies where $2 mojitos join seven-piece salsa bands.
Outside a dive bar in Old Havana, a woman with red flowers braided into her hair and a fat unlit cigar clenched in one hand looked bored as she wandered up and down a quiet street looking for tourists who might want a picture in exchange for a few bucks.
On the Malecon, a band sat and sipped boxes of rum, guitars and maracas laying at their side with no one to play for.
“These are the people it’s hurting,” Gloria said of the travel restrictions.
“The government will always have money. The people will be the ones who hurt.”
Jayme Deerwester and the USA TODAY Network contributed reporting.
—
Americans can still go to Cuba — here’s how
U.S. citizens are permitted to travel to Cuba by securing general licenses, commonly called visas, under one of the following categories:
Family visits
Official government business
Journalistic activity
Professional research or meetings
Religious activities
Sports and public events
Support for the Cuban people
Humanitarian projects
Research
Informational materials
Authorized export activities
Non-immigrant Cuban National
Websites such as cubavisaservices.com will walk customers through the process, which can be done online.
—
Gloria’s Cuban Humanitarian Travel
Chef-owner Gloria Jordan of La Trattoria Cafe Napoli in south Fort Myers offers group tours throughout Cuba under the still-permitted travel category “Supporting the Cuban People.” Her tours take visitors to privately owned restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Her groups stay in privately-owned homes, with the goal of bolstering Cuban entrepreneurship. For pricing and details email gloriachef05@gmail.com. Interested travelers can also stop by her restaurant at 12377 S. Cleveland Ave. or call 239-931-0050 and leave their information.
Leave a Reply