If you go anywhere this year you should visit the country that has been more intertwined with the United States than almost any other in the world, but has been “off limits” for almost half a century. Before the infamous embargo, Cuba was where we as Americans went on vacation, were influenced on the latest in music and dance, and inspired America writers like Earnest Hemingway to produce noble prize winning literature. Despite Havana being about the same distance from Philadelphia to New York City, Cuba may as well be a million mile away…until now. This author has traveled to over forty countries around the world and spent more than ten years of his adult life outside the United States. At the risk of contributing to the saturation of this last bastion of uncommercialized countries left on earth I must confess, Cuba is the most interesting place I have ever been.

You cannot return from Cuba and not feel changed, better educated, and enlightened about art, music, literature and yes, even politics.

It is legal to travel to Cuba if you follow the rules. Given the pending elections in the United States and transition now going on inside Cuba, the ability to travel there may not last. DestinationCuba.com is where you can learn these rules and communicate with those authorized organizations that can assist you in experiencing the trip of a lifetime.

For over a decade Tico Travel was an authorized Travel Service Provider and authorized Carrier Service Provider to Cuba. As the first non Cuban owned  company with these extremely complicated and difficult licenses Tico Travel has been able to “see behind the curtain” and has the unique knowledge that can only be gained by actually being “on the ground” in Cuba with a perspective absent the emotion that comes from those with roots in Cuba.

We have traveled from Santiago to Pinar del Rio, covering the entire length of this breath-taking island. We have sat with Earnest Hemingway’s boat captain before he passed, Gregorio Fuentes, and the inspiration for the protagonist in his Nobel Prize winning book, “The Old Man and The Sea.” Our presence helped distribute accurate information about true condition on the ground in Cuba and the reality that lay between the rhetoric.

Due to restrictions on ownership regarding licenses for travel to Cuba we have voluntarily suspended our licenses and therefore are now free to share everything we know about the truth in traveling to Cuba, free of running afoul of the regulations and free of angering those in the tiny community of companies that provide 98% of the travelers to Cuba.

On  DestinationCuba.com, free of the potential repercussions that come from telling the truth and being the business of selling travel to Cuba, we will attempt to dispel some of the myths that are perpetrated about Cuba and shine light on the real situation inside Cuba and how one can legally travel there from the United States.

 Would you qualify to travel to Cuba under a specific or a general license?