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New rules Cuba / Havana has anyone experiences


muenchner
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We are on our transatlantic overnight in Cuba. There was some confusion about the new rules. We are Germans, as I understand it makes no difference and we must abide by the US rules. Does anyone have experiences? Do we have to book an excursion on both days to go ashore? Or is only one day enough? I think the offered land excursions are not really interesting and too expensive. There are also the costs for the visa ... Thank you for your help.

 

I apologize for the typo in the headline, I could not correct that

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We are on our transatlantic overnight in Cuba. There was some confusion about the new rules. We are Germans, as I understand it makes no difference and we must abide by the US rules. Does anyone have experiences? Do we have to book an excursion on both days to go ashore? Or is only one day enough? I think the offered land excursions are not really interesting and too expensive. There are also the costs for the visa ... Thank you for your help.

 

I apologize for the typo in the headline, I could not correct that

 

You can go ashore and do what you want . Tours aren't required.

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We are British and found that we could come and go as we wished. We were never questioned. We did have a private classic car tour booked on one of the days but were never asked about our plans once we got to Cuba. We did have to fill in a form on embarkation that asked if we were doing a tour or making our own plans and a few other options. We were doing several of the options but you could only tick one box. It was all much more relaxed than we were expecting.

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We are British and found that we could come and go as we wished. We were never questioned. We did have a private classic car tour booked on one of the days but were never asked about our plans once we got to Cuba. We did have to fill in a form on embarkation that asked if we were doing a tour or making our own plans and a few other options. We were doing several of the options but you could only tick one box. It was all much more relaxed than we were expecting.

 

Thanks for your reply. When have you been there? When did you book?

Did you get your visa onboard? Great to hear it was relaxed... :-)

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We went to Havana on a British ship in January. The visa was £15. We went with Azamara last month and the visa is $75. You are given a form to fill in which you keep with your passport which they check each time you leave the ship. No other checks were made as to whether any passengers were taking trips or not.

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We went to Havana on a British ship in January. The visa was £15. We went with Azamara last month and the visa is $75. You are given a form to fill in which you keep with your passport which they check each time you leave the ship. No other checks were made as to whether any passengers were taking trips or not.

 

Of course there are no checks in Cuba other than having a Visa. The laws regarding travel in Cuba, tours, etc. are all from the US so why would anyone in Cuba care? With the laws being US, the only enforcement would be from US officials. From reports, arriving back in the US Immigrations/Customs seems to be not doing anything to verify the passengers followed the US laws.

 

From what I understand, journals are required to verify following the US laws and need to be maintained for 5 years so possible in the future people could be asked to provide proof of compliance. Probably not but, never know????

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Thanks for your reply. When have you been there? When did you book?

Did you get your visa onboard? Great to hear it was relaxed... :-)

We were there in March but did book a year ago which should have made a difference but that was one question no one ever asked. We did have to get the same visa on board as the Americans, $75. We were told before we went that we could get our own visa but would have to be the same as on board, it may be a little cheaper as an admin charge is added but we couldn’t use the £15 British visa as we were on an American ship.

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Another great source is Azamara: https://www.azamaraclubcruises.com/destinations/cuba/about-cuba. Not a lawyer, but, I think the rules apply to all passengers (US and other) for ships departing from the US with Cuba as a destination. The common penalty for violating the rules is probably passport revocation for a US citizen and through a whole mess of reciprocal agreements the US can ask and most nations will agree to revocation of foreign passports. Azamara can also be held liable and loose their license because they are responsible for compliance. That said, and you casually violate State Department restrictions, I doubt you would be prosecuted. If you exchange $10,000 on the street, arrange for a shipment of cigars to be sent home etc. there can be significant penalties including loss of passport.

Prior to allowing direct visits to Cuba a few years ago US citizens could travel to Cuba through Canada and most of the Caribbean with little interference as long as the trip was not of a commercial or political nature.

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Prior to allowing direct visits to Cuba a few years ago US citizens could travel to Cuba through Canada and most of the Caribbean with little interference as long as the trip was not of a commercial or political nature.

 

Problem with your statement is you said US citizens could travel to Cuba......... and forgot to say illegally in most cases since tourism was not one of the exceptions to the US ban on travel to Cuba. Most, if not all tourists got away with illigally traveling to Cuba however that does not negate the illegal travel done by many.

 

Do appreciate your comments regarding repercussions from the US Government for not following the current US Regulations. As I previously said, all the talk about following the rules is of no interest to the Cuban Government and why there are no issues while in Cuba. The problems could come at a later date but, only from the US Government.

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Problem with your statement is you said US citizens could travel to Cuba.......interest to the Cuban Government and why there are no issues while in Cuba. The problems could come at a later date but, only from the US Government.

 

Yes...... it was considered illegal to travel for tourism but similar to the current regulations you could travel for a "purposeful" visit. This allowed US Citizens to visit sick relatives, journalists to write stories, MD's to attend conferences etc. It was not that difficult to find or create a "purposeful" reason to visit and the filing process was so ambiguous that many people simply sent a letter or affidavit to the Department of State and jumped on the next plane before DOS could respond. Not even sure if DOS was the correct agency but they wrote the rules. The big caveat was you were not allowed to spend (or bring?) US Dollars. Foreign governments were not obligated to report US Citizens traveling to Cuba nor were airline databases as integrated with government databases as they are today. If I recall the Canadians, and maybe other nations, would flag multiple or suspicious trips and notify the US. The above is not from personal experience, just stories I heard from others. It also evolved from a total ban by most countries after the revolution to around 2000 when only the US were still restricting travel to Cuba.

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Just home from Quest and as the previous poster has said, the visa bought through Azamara was checked along with passport every time we left and returned to the ship. In one of the ports, the visa was exchanged for a card and this card was retained until the last day in Cuba, as we disembarked for a wander about the port. It was all much easier than we had expected. We have, though, made a couple of notes about our wanderings...... just in case.

 

However, for some passengers on our cruise, there was a bit of an issue with the payment of said visa, as they had expected to pay for this out of their on board CREDIT, as they believed had been suggested at embarkation. This turned out to be not quite the case, as the visa was able to be paid from the on board ACCOUNT. Several passengers were upset to discover that they were charged this $75 to their credit card at the end of the cruise, and had therefore left the equivalent unspent (and lost) in their on board credit......

 

To be fair, at least two letters were delivered to staterooms pointing this out, but it was the vocabulary used which had caused the confusion. Azamara staff had obviously seen the issue in previous cruises and were attempting to avert repetition.

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Just home from Quest and as the previous poster has said, the visa bought through Azamara was checked along with passport every time we left and returned to the ship. In one of the ports, the visa was exchanged for a card and this card was retained until the last day in Cuba, as we disembarked for a wander about the port. It was all much easier than we had expected. We have, though, made a couple of notes about our wanderings...... just in case.

 

However, for some passengers on our cruise, there was a bit of an issue with the payment of said visa, as they had expected to pay for this out of their on board CREDIT, as they believed had been suggested at embarkation. This turned out to be not quite the case, as the visa was able to be paid from the on board ACCOUNT. Several passengers were upset to discover that they were charged this $75 to their credit card at the end of the cruise, and had therefore left the equivalent unspent (and lost) in their on board credit......

 

To be fair, at least two letters were delivered to staterooms pointing this out, but it was the vocabulary used which had caused the confusion. Azamara staff had obviously seen the issue in previous cruises and were attempting to avert repetition.

 

Great info.. We just received a letter from Azamara re our December Cuba cruise that 2 Visas will be required but Azamara is only going to charge us for one, We were also under the impression that we could use our OBC to cover the Visa, but you are saying this is not the case?

We have never used OBC on Azamara and was under the impression it could be used for settling our onboard account. Are there any other restrictions that we should be aware of?

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I was on a recent cruise to Cuba, and was charged the $75 to my onboard ACCOUNT. So the definitive answer is No, the visa cannot be paid for with your OBC, unless I suppose if you have refundable OBC paid for and given to you by your travel agent. Ask the Customer Service desk before your last day for a copy of your Onboard Account so you have no surprises.

 

And just so there's no confusion re. some of the recent posts on this thread...traveling to Cuba on Azamara is 100% legal. We are one of the cruise lines with the sought-after people-to-people license allowing us to bring visitors to Cuba.

 

Also, US dollars are now allowed into the country. There are government exchange offices at every port and it is very easy to exchange USD into CUC. I only exchanged small amounts after the first port call since there is little to spend it on.

 

P.S. my blog about my cruise to Cuba in March is currently on our website: https://www.azamaraclubcruises.com/int/blog/visiting-cuba-onboard-azamara-quest

Edited by BBMacLaird
Added my P.S.
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After three trips to Cuba I have learned to bring Euros in. The exchange is better. Try to bring nice new notes. Found it easier at the port than at airport first time.

 

I went thru more cash than Bonnie. I had lunch out two trips, taxis two trips. Drinks,classic car ride. Brought gifts. Lots to spend money on if you like art, T-shirt’s and eat off ship.

Havana is very safe

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Some other information here about currency. Neither Cuba nor the ship will exchange Northern Ireland ponds. A couple from Northern Ireland learnt the hard way.

 

In Santiago de Cuba we were trying to change our left over CUCs back into sterling but were only allowed to change it into dollars. In Havana you can get Sterling back.

 

Another point about Santiago is that a couple had bought a picture for 10 CUCs and the port officials charged them 3 CUCs “import duty” when they were having their bags scanned on returning to the ship.

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:cool:

Some other information here about currency. Neither Cuba nor the ship will exchange Northern Ireland ponds. A couple from Northern Ireland learnt the hard way.

 

In Santiago de Cuba we were trying to change our left over CUCs back into sterling but were only allowed to change it into dollars. In Havana you can get Sterling back.

 

Another point about Santiago is that a couple had bought a picture for 10 CUCs and the port officials charged them 3 CUCs “import duty” when they were having their bags scanned on returning to the ship.

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:cool: We were that couple from Northern Ireland. Make sure and have English Stirling notes to exchange. We had to withdraw dollars on the ship and get a really bad exchange rate. Quite annoying but we weren't exchanging a ransom! All worth it though.

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