After being taboo to Americans for over 50 years, President Obama opened the communist island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida to travel for US citizens as perhaps his most abiding legacy.
Carnival's new line, Fathom, kicked off this emerging phase with "cultural exchange" cruises. These working vacations allow passengers to help Cubans directly with essentially small-scale Peace Corps-type activities ashore.
Soon the floodgates opened.
Industry giants Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Carnival found a market for some of their older ships as an alternative to the Bahamas, with demand allowing them to charge three times as much to include a stop in this unique third world nation as for similar Caribbean cruises.
More upscale ships also enterred the fray, including Azamara and Oceania, but their first cruises sold out rapidly, leaving procrastinators behind.
Just this week, Oceania again generated excitement by announcing Insignia would cruise to Cuba later this year for a series of voyages. Check out the linked Oceania Cuba brochure to learn more about your chance to visit the communist country in November and December.
Once the brochure comes up, you can virtually flip through the pages using arrows and click on the pages to enlarge them.
You'll probably need to view the brochure on a computer screen, possibly one with extra magnification, if like most folks interested in havin' a nice day in Havana you're a baby boomer whose reading glasses aren't always sufficient.
Many baby boomers like me remember being children during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when President John F. Kennedy faced down Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev after the USSR began constructing nuclear missile sites in Fidel Castro's communist country.
It was a tense couple of weeks when I distincly remember playing 4-square in my driveway with Glen Rocha and other kids on my block, where we repeated things our parents and teachers had said about the communists not believing in God or freedoms we Americans took for granted.
Would the world soon end beneath nuclear mushroom clouds?
It left a lasting impression, and having the chance to visit the previously forbidden site of such dramatic history has proven an irresistable lure for many.
While Cuba has been open for travel to essentially everyone in the world except Americans, it has remained stuck in the era just after Castro took over the country with Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara (who inexplicably has became a literal fashion icon for young people who have no clue of who he actually was) and a ragtag band of rebels who overthrew a corrupt but pro-American government.
Symbolic of that pre-Castro Era, classic Detroit rolling tons of elegantally-designed metal have been kept on the road because no one could afford to replace them with new cars except possibly the Castros and their inner circle, but even they preferred to just fix up their old Jeeps. In Fidel Castro's funeral procession, one of their best Jeep's broke down, which some saw as a fitting metaphor of the failures of communism.
Lots of Cuban refugees escaped to Miami in the aftermath of the revolution, when their property was snatched up by Castro's government for the higher good of the people.
Shortages have been the norm for Cubans left behind ever since, with average take-home salary of around $20 per month.
As one of his final acts, President Obama ended America's longstanding dry-foot policy whereby any Cuban refugee escaping that island "socialist paradise" by whatever raggedy little boat they could muster and making it to the USA could stay, so their only hope for a better life is for generous American tourists to visit their country.
If you've ever wanted to see a clear comparison of what life under capitalism versus communism looks like, you have the opportunity by seeing Miami to Havana for yourself on your next cruise, keeping in mind that American foreign policy could change in coming years.
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