CAN AMERICANS STILL TRAVEL TO CUBA?
New restrictions governing Americans' travel to Cuba announced June 16 and updated July 25, 2017 by the U.S. Treasury do away with individual licenses and now require U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba from anywhere in the world to be sponsored and guided by an American company on an itinerary guaranteeing "full-time meaningful interaction" between the traveler and ordinary Cubans. An official representative of the American company must accompany U.S. travelers in order to ensure compliance with the new requirements, and both the traveler and the company must keep records for five years documenting their compliant travel.
Cuba Travel Adventures Group has always compliant with the spirit of true People to People interaction with Cubans, and so we're happy to say that for us it will be "business as usual".
My family began our "love affair" with Cuba and its remarkable people in 2004, a feeling that time plus dozens of trips to the island haven't diminished. With our then-six year-old son Zack in tow, my wife and I were escorted by a Habanero in his rusted jalopy through barrio communities and famous cultural sites in the Capital before continuing on into beautiful Pinar del Rio Province where we visited Soroa, Vinales, Las Terrazas and the beautiful nature in between. We stayed with families in their homes and enjoyed meals with them, met their neighbors, walked through communities, hiked their hills and absorbed the full range of daily life. Each day we interacted with a myriad of Cubans who never let on to how sorry they must have felt for us in our struggles to speak a comprehensible Spanish Through our experiences we developed warm feelings of admiration for the Cuban people and their culture.
Following the December 2014 announcement of “new openings” for Americans, Cuba Travel Adventures Group Cuba travel programs have been consistently undertaken in compliance with OFAC Educational and People to People regulations. Our core value is to lift lives of ordinary Cubans through daily experiences in their culture, in their homes, at their historic sites, and through our clients' unique experiences off the beaten track in their communities. Through these close encounters with Cuba's remarkable people, and through our donations and by patronizing their new businesses, we help raise ordinary Cubans' standards of living.
Our mission at Cuba Travel Adventures Group is centered around the core belief that living life fully includes our responsibility to share our many blessings by helping others improve their lives. We hope you are able to travel in Cuba with us to see what we mean.
Saludos,
Manny Kopstein
Principal & Chief Travel Planner