With a little bit of research, I gathered that most of the capital, San Juan, and other oft-frequented parts of the U.S. territory have been set to welcome tourists for a while. I packed my American dollars and left my passport at home.

Old San Juan, the historic colonial barrio of the capital, on first stroll looked untouched by Maria. The cobblestone streets were spotless, the Spanish colonial buildings bright and colorful, and visitors flocked to the hundreds of pink, purple, yellow, green and blue umbrellas on Fortaleza Street leading to the governor’s mansion.

On Fortaleza Street, I stopped at Barrachina Restaurant, which has a marble plaque boasting it is the house where the piña colada was first concocted in 1963. The pineapple, coconut and Puerto Rican rum drink was so fresh and delightful that I understood why the place didn’t offer a drink menu, and why it became the island’s national drink.

Next I ventured to the two fortresses, San Cristóbal Castle on the east end of Old San Juan and San Felipe del Morro Castle on the northwest tip of the islet. Both had majestic tunnels, sentry boxes and sprawling views of the city and sea.

It wasn’t until I stepped down into the La Perla community between the two fortresses that I got a glimpse of Irma and Maria’s wrath. Some buildings in the shanty town were shells of their former states. A minivan with a concrete slab above its broken windshield sat idle. I didn’t have to wander far, and it wasn’t advised, to see that hurricane recovery efforts to La Perla came “Despacito” — slowly, like the Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee song whose video was filmed there.

I got out to exploring the eastern part of the island via a full-day group tour with Yokahu Kayak Trips. A friendly driver picked me and other guests up in San Juan and drove us an hour to El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest that belongs to the U.S. Forest Service. Our driver and guide Ramón González pointed out how much lusher the landscape in this region was, but that it wasn’t always like that.

“After Maria, it was all dried up. Never seen something like that in Puerto Rico. Seeing it like it was fall was quite amazing,” González said. “Still in recovery process but for the most part everything is back to normal.”

Inside El Yunque, we walked to the top of Yokahu Tower and saw green for acres. Though it appears back to normal, many trails are still closed to the public. But after climbing up the side of the La Coca Falls waterfall, I felt I got to take in the essence of the rain forest.

We stopped for lunch at nearby Luquillo Beach, which is known for having a strip of exactly 60 food kiosks, numbered accordingly. At No. 20, I ate mofongo, a traditional Puerto Rican dish of mashed plantains stuffed with chicken, pork, seafood, or other filling.

A magical experience awaited us farther east in Fajardo. At sunset, we put on life jackets and began a night kayaking journey through a red mangrove channel into Laguna Grande. The lagoon has one of the world’s five bioluminescent bays, three of which are in Puerto Rico. As I paddled to the middle of the lagoon, I noticed flickers of light with every splash. Dipping my hand in the water, I got sparkles at my fingertips. The single-celled plankton that light up when disturbed were back after Maria.

“We helped to take trees out of the way and then it was amazing bioluminescence,” out kayaking guide Luis Mendez said.

Another day was well spent relaxing on San Juan’s beaches. I walked along El Condado, which has many high-rise hotels, restaurants and bars, and Ocean Park Beach, an upscale beachfront community. At scenic Isla Verde Beach, I met Desiree Rivera, who told me she met a woman who lost the roof of her house and still greeted her by offering coffee — and her “panoramic view.”

“Maria taught us to be resilient, to not stay quiet, to fight for our rights, for the things that we want and the things that we need,” Rivera said in Spanish. “We reinvented ourselves strongly.”

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/12/21/travel-is-it-too-soon-for-tourists-to-return-to-puerto-rico/

Guests are not allowed into Samuel Clemens’s home alone – he collected many valuable things over the years, as one can imagine – so I picked a tour with living history character Lizzie Wills, Clemens’s maid and “a general busybody.”

Lizzie led us to the porch of his gigantic red brick mansion and opened its grandiose wooden door to let us in.

“‘Picturesque gothic’ is what the architect called it,” she said, once we were standing inside the impressive entrance hall with walls and its tall ceiling painted red with black and silver patterns.

Clemens’s home indeed seemed “part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock,” as his biographer Justin Kaplan described it.

Lizzie walked us up the winding staircase, with a railing we could touch, to the second floor. Clemens wasn’t home, she said, and offered to take us into the master bedroom.

“I won’t tell if you don’t tell,” she whispered loudly.

For having such a big house with 25 rooms, Clemens’ own bedroom was smaller than I expected. But it was full of character, featuring an elaborate bedstead with carved angels that he purchased from Venice.

Lizzie took us through the other bedrooms, the guest room, the drawing room, the dining room and a lush conservatory that Clemens’s daughters called “The Jungle,” and accurately so.

However, the highlight for many guests, myself included, was the billiard room. The large space on the third floor, above the busy parts of the home, is where Clemens relaxed and entertained friends late into the night, and burned the midnight oil on his literary works.

“Oh the things he’s worked on here … ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’ ‘The Prince and the Pauper,’” Lizzie told us. “And he does not like to be interrupted. He can write for hours when he’s inspired. We’re not even allowed to dust!”

Even without Clemens, the room had a special feel to it.

Our visit ended in the basement, which Lizzie said was only accessible to guests touring the home with a living history character like herself. She showed us some household items of the period such as a 19th century iron, and let us touch and take pictures of Clemens’s manuscripts and books.

Lizzie then revealed her real identity as a Mark Twain House tour guide Barbara Gallow and that all her stories “are true, including the fact that Lizzie got caught” with a man in the house she ended up getting hitched with, and had to stop working for the Clemenses because married women were not allowed to work in other men’s houses unless their husbands did too. Lizzie maintained a good relationship with the family, according to Gallow.

I ended my stay in the place Clemens long called home at the accompanying museum, where I heard an audio recording of one of his famous quotes that cemented the trip to Hartford as worthwhile.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” Clemens wrote in the conclusion of “The Innocents Abroad.” “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/07/06/travel-see-where-mark-twain-slept-and-wrote-his-masterpieces/

Upon landing at the airport in Managua, my friends and I were greeted by the private tour company we hired and made a couple of stops in the colorful, but rather deserted, capital before heading up a mountainside to the Masaya Volcano.

Off the van, we walked toward the crowd to a lookout point that revealed a massive, active volcanic crater. The caldera was deeper than the eye could see, so far down I could not catch a glimpse of lava, only reddish smoke ascending into plumes of brown and gray. The marvelous volcano, only half an hour from Managua, I heard was even more mystifying at night.

Our destination was the Pacific coastal town of San Juan del Sur, but we made a stop along the way at the Islets of Granada and took a peaceful boat ride. The small islands had houses that I imagined belonged to wealthy Nicaraguans, and big trees with monkeys residing. We passed by a boat with two men merrily net fishing, a pleasant reminder of the joys of a simple life.

In the city of Granada, we walked through blocks of Spanish colonial buildings and admired the yellow-and-white neoclassical facade of the Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral. An hour-and-a-half ride south brought us to San Juan del Sur by evening.

After checking into Hotel La Estación, we walked across the street to Restaurante El Buen Gusto on the beach for dinner. A large fish and lobster tail duo smothered in clams and a creamy sauce cost a fraction of what it would back in California. I paired it with a refreshing, bright purple dragon fruit margarita, then hopped along the restaurants and establishments on Paseo del Rey, the lively street that runs along the sand.

I found my excursion for the next day at an unlikely place, a hostel selling bus tickets to nearby points of interest.

Early the next morning, a friend and I took a 40-minute ride north to San Jorge, where we got tickets for an hour-long ferry to the island of Ometepe, which means, “two mountains.” At first, all we could see ahead of us on Lake Nicaragua was water. Then two peaks appeared in the distance, one taller than the other.

The two volcanoes joined by an isthmus formed the island we set out to explore. We docked at the largest village, Moyogalpa, got a paper map with the main attractions highlighted, and rented a motorbike to find them. The island has only one main road that, as far as we traveled, has space for only one vehicle in each direction.

There was no cell phone reception on the island and street signs were scarce, so we initially overshot the narrow paved path leading to Charco Verde, a large pond with an emerald hue coming from algae. We had a fresh fish lunch by the water then hit the road again for the second must-see stop, Ojo de Agua. The waterhole in the middle of the woods is no ordinary natural spring — it comes from the volcano Maderas. Taking a dip in the volcanic water, with a freshly machete-chopped coconut, I found paradise.

I could have stayed here forever, but I didn’t want to miss what surprise the last sight would bring. It was called Punta Jesus Maria. Getting there wasn’t the easiest — the road went from firm to loose dirt and soil. After passing some outdoor restaurants, we caught a glimpse of water. The further I walked, the narrower the land got, until water currents washed up from either side. To my friend, who stayed further back, I was walking on water.

The moment was all the more magical as the sun began to set. But we had to get back before the last ferry left us. On the boat, looking back at Ometepe as the sky turned bright orange and yellow, I felt I had found the treasure I was after in a trip to unexpected Nicaragua.

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/04/12/travel-nicaragua-offers-unexpected-treasures/

Those thoughts dissipated when I arrived in downtown Bogotá and began wandering La Candelaria, a neighborhood equivalent to a European old city. The buildings were of Spanish colonial and art deco styles, colorful and quaint, and decorated with intricate murals. A cat eye painted on a utility pole lined up with the feline’s head on the mural behind it, if you looked at it from just the right angle

Exploring various narrow streets teeming with lively bars and restaurants led to multiple museums and the Plaza de Bolívar, unmistakably the city’s main square. Standing at its center surrounded by historic buildings, I grasped the grandeur of the city that has worked to cleanse itself of a bad rap.

To get a taste of other parts of the South American country, I took an hour flight northwest to Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city. I had lunch surrounded by greenery at the Situ restaurant inside the Botanical Garden of Medellín. The garden was blossoming with thousands of flowers and species and I was awed by the “Orchidiarium,” ten hexagonal flower-tree structures that shelter orchids and butterflies.

My next adventure was on public transit.

Stepping onto a gondola lift cable car and taking a seat as it began making a steep ascent away from the station, I felt the rush of delight that comes with riding up to a ski resort. The polished, box-like car climbed up the cable, revealing Medellín’s picturesque topography — a valley surrounded by mountains.

To me and other visiting Americans, it was a scenic bird’s-eye view of lush hills and earthy toned homes. But to locals aboard cable cars around us, the Metrocable was a means of transportation from their humble barrios in the mountains to Medellín’s city center, jobs and the hope for a better life.

“Ten years ago, this was a very dangerous area,” Juliana Correa, a spokeswoman for the city’s Metro system, said in Spanish, as more clusters of dwellings came into view. “People did not go out on the streets.”

When we got off at the Villa Sierra station, we were greeted not by rundown infrastructure, but by a modern outdoor gym. It was peaceful, serene. The Metrocable and how it turned the neighborhood once wrought by paramilitary war into a welcoming place for residents, and even tourists, is one reason Medellín won the Transformational City of the Year award from the U.S.-based Council of the Americas a couple years ago.

Colombia’s major cities are not overrun by drug cartels, as the Netflix series “Narcos” suggests.

“Pablo Escobar made Medellín known in the world,” Sandra Ospina, a spokeswoman for the Agency of Cooperation and Investment of Medellín and the Metropolitan Area, said in Spanish. “We have aspired to eliminate the barriers. It is now a city that welcomes foreigners with tranquility.”

On the ride back down the Metrocable, I gained a new respect for Medellín for bringing transit and innovation not to its richest, but to its poorest areas.

We transferred from the Metrocable to a Metro train to get back to the city center. I was impressed by how well-kept the system in the developing country seemed compared to mass transit back home. A friendly rider explained why.

“We take care of the Metro like it’s our home,” Bernardo Ochoa, 56, said in Spanish.

“This is heaven, it’s the truth,” he said. “When I die, I ask god to give me a window to see Medellín.”

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/18/travel-colombia-reinvents-itself-from-its-troubled-past-2/

A wide waterway was lined on both sides by monumental 17th and 18th century buildings in a myriad of warm, earthy colors. Boats and brick bridges crossed the still, reflective water. As soon as I started wandering, I found myself delightfully lost in a maze of canals. Figuring out that the narrow streets and canals form concentric belts around the crescent-shaped center didn’t lend a sense of direction either.

I came upon a building that from the exterior didn’t particularly stand out from the rest, but had a very long line. It must be the Anne Frank House, I thought, and confirmed. I decided to save the touristy stuff for later and kept walking.

The Amsterdam Cheese Museum seemed to be more frequented by locals, so I stepped inside to find there were more cheeses than I knew existed. I sampled a few including six- to eight-month aged typical Dutch gouda with cumin, and truffle goat cheese.

After spending the day absorbing old Dutch culture, I checked out the recently opened A’DAM tower lookout 20 floors up. The sky deck revealed a panoramic view of the city center with “AMSTERDAM” spelled out on the port which was bustling even at night.

The next day, I visited the Van Gogh Museum. Though “The Starry Night” and “Irises” are in the U.S., the museum in Amsterdam has the largest collection of Vincent van Gogh’s works, as well as those of his contemporaries in the Netherlands.

Not far from that museum, in front of the Rijksmuseum, was the iconic red-and-white Amsterdam sign. It was swarmed, but all the more fun climbing the letters and attempting to get a good picture like everyone else.

Just as I started to feel as if I had a good grasp of Amsterdam in a short amount of time, the thought of windmills returned. Turns out they were in Kinderdijk, a train and bus ride away. I picked a random sausage and croquette from the Smullers fast food chain vending machines at Amsterdam Central Station and hopped on a train to Rotterdam, then on a bus that wound through miles of countryside.

At first, the village didn’t seem too special, but as I walked down a paved path, 19 quintessentially Dutch windmills erected in the mid-1700s to keep Holland above water came into sight, looking large even from a distance. Instead of taking a boat tour along the canals, I admired the spinning windmills on a slow stroll through the grass. Staring at the man-made wonders, I lost all sense of time.

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/01/29/why-travelers-shouldnt-stereotype-amsterdam/

Little did I know how elusive they are.

Checking the weather one last time before departure on my WOW air flight, things weren’t looking promising. Precipitation appeared in the forecast for the entire week, and clear skies are required to see the aurora borealis.

When my three travel buddies and I landed at Keflavik International Airport, we were greeted by rain, not snow. Turns out the country isn’t as icy as it sounds – at least not all the time, even in mid-February.

It was 4 a.m., another five-and-a-half hours to go before sunrise, so we got the rental car and drove around trying to see Keflavik. The town was asleep.

Arriving in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital and its largest city, we were enticed by an illuminated glass dome structure on a hill and drove up a side road to see it. It was the Perlan, a hot water tower perched over the city. In town, we were lucky to be accommodated at our guesthouse hours before check-in and took a much-needed nap before sunrise.

Outside, the air was fresh and chilly. We drove back west to the Blue Lagoon, which we had tickets for, but on our last night. A geothermal spa, the large lagoon was a bright turquoise color during the day, its warm water creating steam that rose into the frigid, 30-degree air.

Further southwest, we reached the noisy Gunnuhver steam vents, spewing heat from the ground nonstop, they’re named after a female ghost who supposedly haunts the place. Closeby, the Hafnaberg Cliffs showed off Iceland’s rugged coastline. Waves crashed against protruding rocks as relentless wind pounded us, forcing us to retreat to the car.

Iceland was cold, but could’ve been worse. Snow boots – waterproof – with thick socks, a thermal long sleeve shirt, leggings under pants, a light down jacket and a waterproof North Face jacket got me through just fine. I only wore snow pants on a couple of occasions.

Iceland is known for fresh fish and lamb, so we stopped at Fish House Bar & Grill in Grindavik. Fish and chips of haddock melted in your mouth and the grilled lamb chops tasted particularly rich. The sun set just after 5:45 p.m., and we rested for the next day’s excursion.

Before dawn, we loaded our backpacks into the car and drove to meet our Discover tour guide Orri Amin, who would take us in a 4 X 4 super Jeep for the next couple of days to explore south Iceland.

Once we hit the road east, visibility dropped. As Orri drove through the fog and rain with ease, we were grateful we chose not to drive ourselves. Soon, we began off-roading. The Jeep cleared rocks, small hills and went down and over shallow rivers to reach the Gigjokull glacier outlet.

Orri pointed out the massive block of ice nestled in between the mountains and explained that Eyjafjallajokull, a volcano covered in an ice cap, erupted in 2010 and caused Gigjokull to burst and melt. He said we could walk as close to it as we wanted, but warned we would have to cross water. He stayed behind.

At a narrower part of the stream, someone had placed a plank of wood, so I crossed – and almost slipped in the process. The glacier was farther than it looked, and a bit daunting knowing I was standing where a chunk of it had broken off and melted: I turned back.

“Next year, it will be gone,” Orri said as we drove away from the UNESCO World Heritage Site. “The glacier is melting very fast.”

Our next stop was the Seljalandsfoss waterfall. I walked up to where it was roped off but no further. Orri said we could walk behind it but would get soaked.

Next we ventured to Skogafoss, another towering waterfall that was even more extraordinary when you realized you could walk right up to it without any barrier or obstruction. I stopped when a wall of water hit my face, but feeling its thunderous pulse for a moment was stunning. We continued walking up what felt like hundreds of narrow steps to see Skogafoss from above.

Tired and hungry, we welcomed Orri’s suggestion that we eat at the best place for fish and chips. It was a food stand, Sveitagrill Miu Mia’s Country Grill, which serves only the catch of the day. The fillet of deep-fried fish paired perfectly with potato wedges served with salt and vinegar and Icelandic tartar sauce, slightly sweeter than American style with crunchy relish and a hint of curry.

The last stop of the day was Black Sand Beach. Beneath a gray, overcast sky, the beach was even darker than I imagined. The sand was the color of charcoal, a sharp contrast to the crashing white waves. Orri warned us not to stand too close. Up close, you can’t see the waves coming, he said, and families have been swept away never to be seen again.

I found I could have stared at the beach’s wicked beauty for hours, if it wasn’t for the cold, beating wind. A couple of large rocks protruded from the sea. On the sand, cliffs of basalt columns resembled a step pyramid and offered a photo opp for visitors willing to climb.

We stayed overnight at the Gerdi Guesthouse surrounded by nothing but mountains and the ocean. I eagerly asked Orri if we could see the Northern Lights and he pointed to the sky. The aurora activity was high, he said, but we had no hope of seeing it through the clouds. He showed us pictures of the auroras and said they look better in photos, but are still very beautiful.

The next day, we went looking for ice caves in Skaftafell, a wilderness area in Vatnajökull National Park. Our guide, Lu Gudmundsdottir, helped us hook spikes on the bottoms of our snow boots so we could walk on the glacier, she led us to several ice caves. The first was flooded and we were not able to enter. The second was more inviting.

“We’re very lucky because (the water) was gone through the night,” Lu said of the cave, called Black Diamond. “Everything we were standing on was flooded.”

Usual Februaries in Iceland are much colder.

As we approached the large opening, I was awed by crystallized, frozen walls illuminated by daylight. Deeper in, the light disappeared and we used the headlights on our helmets to navigate our way in. The cave’s ceiling dropped gradually until we had to duck down and nearly crawl. It was humbling to sit there and take in the natural formations that are melting and breaking at an increasing rate with climate change.

“Now it’s disappearing,” Orri said. “That’s just the way it is.”

The rest of the day trip was less physical, but no less marvelous.

Jokularson, a glacial lagoon, was full of large, soft blue, floating icebergs shifting slowly. It was hard to imagine the lagoon was iceless a few days ago, but had changed due to wind and the current, according to Orri.

Just when I thought we had seen the highlights, Orri took us to the other side of Jokularson to Diamond Beach. Icebergs washed ashore, or left on the black pebbled ground by the receding water level, dotted the entire area. I climbed on various chunks of ice, most of them bigger than me. I felt tiny walking through what seemed like a maze of diamonds.

On the way back to Reykjavik, Orri drove us up a trail he said his wife doesn’t like him to cross, so we could see the damage that the recent Katla volcano eruption caused. Looking down from the top of the mountain, we could see miles and miles of black matter that from a distance looked like an ocean, but was actually dried lava. Then the volcano disappeared behind the fog.

“Now you know why I love my country. It’s incredible,” Orri said. “We had it for two minutes and it’s gone.”

It was almost dark when we reached Seljalandsfoss, but Orri kept his promise about climbing behind it. Cold and weary, I felt like passing, but some visitors leaving said we should do it. The incline wasn’t too steep but scary, as there was no railing, but worth braving and getting drenched. The backside of the waterfall was majestic to see at nightfall, when no one else was around.

The Golden Circle, one of the most visited tourist attractions in Iceland, paled in comparison to the private super Jeep excursion. Perhaps we should have done it first.

We drove the route ourselves instead of joining a large tour bus. The Strokkur fountain geyser was impressive, shooting water high in the air, and suddenly, every few minutes. The Gullfloss waterfall was unlike Skogafoss and Seljalandsfoss – two-tiered and only able to be admired from a distance.

We spent the rest of the day into the evening at Laugarvatn Fontana, a lesser-known spa with geothermal baths, steam saunas and access to a frigid lake I only dipped my toe into. It would’ve been nice to see the Northern Lights from there, but again it was overcast.

On our last day, we walked around Reykjavik, admiring the quaint buildings against nature’s rugged backdrop and finding our way to the tall, Lutheran parish church Hallgrímskirkja visible through the narrow streets.

With a little time left to spare, we drove through an underwater tunnel and to the small fishing town of Akranes. It was more deserted than other parts of Iceland, and had a small lighthouse. Stones painted with flags of the countries people had visited littered the ground.

At night, we returned to the Blue Lagoon. It was freezing, so instead of walking, I swam out from a different exit. I spread silica mud on my face and deemed a blueberry Skyr yogurt smoothie as my drink, rinsed it with the warm lagoon water and put on an algae mask. It was a relaxing way to end the trip full of extreme sightseeing.

Leaving the Blue Lagoon at night, we saw a pastel smear across the dark sky and I thought maybe those were the Northern Lights. Earlier, I had checked the forecast and was excited to see the western part of the country would clear up.

We drove to an area where some cars had parked on the side of the road.

One of us had a pro camera, set it up on a tripod and snapped a shot and, sure enough, captured the eerie green light. Soon, the aurora activity intensified and revealed its colors to the naked eye.

With my iPhone incapable of capturing even a faint dash of the phenomenon, I learned to simply enjoy the moment. Many times in life, things aren’t what they seem, and sometimes, well, there they are.

https://www.ocregister.com/2017/04/05/a-trip-to-iceland-to-chase-the-northern-lights/

Pricey charter flights were the only direct option to the communist country seemingly stuck 50 years in the past – commercial flights from the U.S. will fly soon – so, I booked a trip from LAX to Mexico City. There, at a check-in kiosk for a Cubana de Aviación flight to Havana, I showed my U.S. passport to a woman who copied down my information on a small slip of paper and asked me for $25. That was my visa to Cuba.

At small José Martí International Airport in Havana, I showed an airport official my U.S. passport as well as the visa. He asked if I wanted the visa stamped instead of my passport, but I said both were fine, since I was traveling for one of a dozen permitted reasons (journalism).

Outside the airport, I exchanged $400 for Cuban convertible pesos, or CUC, which tourists use and are different from the lower-value peso that locals use. Though $1 converts to 1 CUC, I only got 348 CUC after service charges. I hopped into a taxi and gave the driver the address of a place I found to stay at in Centro Havana for $25 a night through Airbnb.

I figured knocking on the door and asking for Manolito, the host whom I had booked with, wouldn’t be too daunting because I’m fluent in Spanish. He was already sitting on the sidewalk waiting for me. Manolito said his house was not available, and walked me to a multiple-story building across from his to meet Frank Martinez, owner of another casa particular, a home with rooms rented to tourists.

Frank, a cook, and his wife, Marilis, a doctor, were extremely warm and welcoming, contrary to stories I had heard of Cubans despising Americans because capitalism allows us to be so well-off. They let me pick a room in their apartment, several stories up, that faced the Malecón, a broad esplanade along the coast.

For the remainder of the day, I wandered around Havana with a paper map and no GPS, since activating a cellphone is complicated and costly. Using street signs, but moreso the waterfront as a reference point, I navigated from Chinatown into the neighborhood of Vedado and walked into the luxurious, historic Hotel Nacional de Cuba, where John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and many others stayed. As the sun began setting, I made my way back to Frank’s house on the Malecón, which came to life with locals hanging out, talking and drinking.

The excursion confirmed what I heard – that Cuba is very safe, even for females, to walk around solo at any time of the day and night. In the communist country, police come down particularly hard on violent crimes against tourists, so it’s probably one of the safest places for foreigners in the Caribbean. That night, I headed to El Bodeguita del Medio and tried the mojito – obligatory, according to what Ernest Hemingway may or may not have written: “My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita.”

Since I planned for only five days in Cuba and wanted to venture outside Havana, I decided to join another visiting guest at Frank’s house on a day trip to Matanzas, a province east of Havana. We took a small boat across the Havana bay to Casablanca, where we bought tickets for a train that afternoon. In the meantime, we walked up a hill to see a house filled with Che Guevara memorabilia, the towering Christ of Havana statue and an old, cannon-equipped castle.

The train to Matanzas was an adventure from the past, moving slowly through rural parts of the country and breaking down a couple of times. Both times, crew members climbed on top and hammered at the overhead wires until it ran again. From Matanzas, a much smaller city than Havana, we took a bus to Varadero, known for its beaches and resorts. The white sands and colorful hotels along them seemed almost like South Beach Miami, but more quaint. Luckily, we caught the last bus back to Havana.

My third day in Cuba was much simpler – I bought a tour to Viñales Valley, known for its green scenery. An air-conditioned bus picked me and other tourists up outside of a hotel and shuttled us first to a rum factory, where we got a taste of the strong drink. Then we had a traditional pork lunch beside a colorful mural on the prehistoric origins of the region, painted on a mountainside. Afterward, the tour guide brought us to a cigar plant and we watched a worker roll tobacco. The tourist experience ended with a boat ride through the Cueva del Indio cave. Back in Havana, I visited El Floridita for the second obligatory drink – Hemingway’s daiquiri.

There was no tour for the next two days to Cienfuegos or Trinidad, cities south of Havana, but I was determined to go, so early in the morning, I flagged down a classic American car – a more fun and cheaper ride than a taxi – to take me to the Víazul bus station for cross-country trips.

It turned out I missed the earliest buses, so I took a Brazilian tourist’s word and joined her on a shared ride in a Cuban’s car to Cienfuegos that cost about the same as a bus ticket. I was a bit nervous about going on the black market ride, but my new travel buddy, Ludmila Curi, said it was a common alternative for tourists. The driver picked up his wife and daughter and stopped at a few points of interest in Cienfuegos, including the historic Parque José Martí.

We got into Trinidad, a colorful colonial town with cobblestone streets, by mid-afternoon. Ludmila and I ate a fish plate at a nice restaurant and then found a room at a casa particular to share by talking to some locals. The room had a rooftop balcony with a spectacular view, and walking the streets of the hilly town around sunset was breathtaking.

Nightlife in Trinidad was surprisingly contemporary. Comedians joked at some of the changes happening in Cuba, underscored by President Barack Obama’s historic visit a couple weeks prior, and a free concert by the Rolling Stones a few days earlier. A drag show was packed to capacity.

I left the next morning on a shared ride with some European tourists back to the capital city, and spent the rest of the day exploring parts of Old Havana. Back at Frank’s house, I joined him and other guests on the rooftop of his tall building to watch the nightly 9 p.m. cannon blast from across the bay, a tradition harking back to the days when it was a signal that the gates of Havana would be closed to protect the city from invaders.

Since it was my last night in Cuba, I took a shared ride to the Fábrica de Arte Cubano, a museum I was told was popular with locals too. Unlike most of Cuba I experienced, this was like a step into the future, or actually the present in our country. The building looked old from the outside but was very modern inside, with striking artwork.

What most caught my eye was a series of prints called “Hotel Habana” by Liudmila & Nelson, juxtaposing present-day Havana with what it may look like when it’s completely open to the U.S. One work, “Malecón,” had a “Welcome to Fabulous La Habana” parody of the famous Las Vegas sign, a McDonald’s sign, a “Revolution” sky banner written in Coca-Cola font and the Golden Gate Bridge. It nailed exactly why I was glad I made it to Cuba when I did.

But as Frank walked me down the steps of his building a few hours later to catch my flight back to Mexico and then the U.S., he enlightened me on something I had not thought of as an American tourist – even though I was aware that the government gave everyone, regardless of profession, the same meager monthly income.

I asked Frank if he was looking forward to the changes Americans will presumably bring. “Yes,” he said in Spanish as he helped me with my duffel bag and put it inside the yellow cab he had called for me.

“We are 50 years in the past,” Frank said. “It’s good that people come and see, but it’s time for change. There’s no way to achieve success here.”

https://www.ocregister.com/2016/07/22/cuba-how-to-get-there-ahead-of-the-american-tourist-invasion/