cuba before and after travel to usa

[janetla]

We are thinking of taking a trip to Cuba this year and would like to do this independently. An all inclusive package is not a concept that appeals - you could literally be anywhere. How difficult is this to do. Also, we have spent the last 20 years travelling to the usa - have numerous us stamps in our passports. Are the cuban immigration likely to give us a hard time because of this. In reverse, if we go back to the us, would a cuban stamp in our passport be likely to give rise to problems in us immigration. We used to have problems years ago having visited greece and turkey and i believe they had some kind of system where they put loose stamps into your passport that you could take out. I cant somehow see the americans going for this - especially these days.

[jno]

no to both: the Cubans don't mind Americans; the Americans don't let you go between America and Cuba (you can fly direct with Virgin so you don't have to go via Miami) but they're not worried by Cuban stamps in your passport. I went to Florida one month and Havana - only 100 miles away or so - the next and had no trouble.

Actually, I've just checked my own passport and I haven't even got a Cuban stamp in it. I can't remember why, but perhaps they just gave me a separate visa with stamp too.

[jno]

incidentally, though there are packages to places like Varadero, which could indeed be resorts anywhere, there are also plenty of people doing tours of towns and countryside that could be nowhere else.

http://www.vjv.co.uk/...urn-havana/index.html

That's just one example, plenty of operators offer them

If you plan to hire a car and do it on your own, take a good map - when I was there the roads, including the motorways, were very poorly signposted.

Good luck. It's a lovely place. Once the Castros die, it'll probably turn into Florida; so the sooner the better.