Havana, Cuba: A Place of Resilience and Beauty

Reposting my originals from Havana.

I’ve had an opportunity to travel the globe experiencing many cultures; witnessing life-changing majestic scenes and interacting with wonderful persons from the local communities. Traveling to Cuba was only a distant dream until the nearly half a century travel restrictions were relaxed by President Obama.

The travel restriction were partially lifted in December 2014, but it wasn’t until taking a sabbatical leave from my job as a medical school professor that I was able to find time, and certainly a relaxed mind and attitude, to travel to Havana and explore it as a local.

I've since traveled back to Havana to spend anther wonderful week before President Trump reinstated many of the travel bands that have limited America's cultural exchange on an individual basis with this beautiful country and people.

I would like to emphasize to all future travelers that not speaking Spanish should not be a deterrent --- I don't speak or understand a word. It turned out that regardless of my very limited Spanish and terrible rhythm when it comes to dancing (particularly Salsa), most of the locals approached me speaking their native tongue only to be completely taken by surprise my response in English…”I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish”. All of the Cubans that I met, however, spoke fluent English.

I’ve decided to write about Cuba in three parts. First, I want to give you complete exposure to the wonderful culture and beautiful people of this largest of the Caribbean islands. The second set of articles in this series will highlight important things to remember when traveling to Cuba. It was frightening to discover that it is nearly impossible to receive money from the U.S. once you’re on Cuban soil (more to come about this and my trip to the US Embassy 'begging' for an ATM). It was more distressing to discover that a simple click on my bank’s iphone app while on one of the rare hotel wifi networks completely froze all of my internet financial access (apparently Cuba is one of six financially restricted counties for U.S. citizens. The third in this series about Cuba will highlight (typically through photojournalism) practical tips to help you make Havana a pleasurable and stress-free destination.

As with all of the articles on Nomad’s Lens, the passion and personalities of the people and communities will be portrayed through original photographs.

Let’s start our journey. You will see Cuba and Havana from an unbiased lens.