GodsThumb

In spite of the official boycott, there is one commercial flight a day between Miami International and Havana, Cuba. However, there’s no point in looking for details about the flight and certainly no way that you could book yourself onto it. The daily USA to Cuba flight does not appear on any information boards or publicly available schedules, and the only Americans permitted to fly on it are member of the press and media services.

If you manage to wangle a trip on the flight — maybe you could get a writing assignment for your local newspaper? — do not expect to be able to prove to friends that you’d actually made the trip. On arrival in the socialist republic, instead of having their passports stamped with incriminating evidence of having been in the land of hand-rolled cigars, an entry visa is stamped on a square paper and attached to the journalist’s passport with a paper clip. So there is no indelible record of the traveler having visited the island. And any cigars brought back are likely to be confiscated, of course.

All of which is historically bizarre, since the first international commercial passenger flight to depart America, in 1920, was to Cuba from South Florida.