For the last year I have been helping people in Cuba sell tourism services online. In practice, this usually means creating accomodation listings on sites like Airbnb...
One of the first things a traveller notices when going to Costa Rica is that almost every town or city is named after a Saint. Growing up in Costa Rica, I just assumed this was something true of all Latin American countries, a legacy of Spanish colonial times. California has San Jose, San Fransisco, etc. I thought it was like that from California to Argentina.
After some travelling in Latin America I realised this was simply not true.
Aviacion de Cubana There was no toilet paper on the Russian-made Antonov 158 plane which took me and 15 other passengers to Havana. The Cuban state airline, Cubana de Aviacion, clearly does not need have to meet profitability targets. Even the dry sandwich they served tasted of an iron curtain.
Not unlike the other living political museum of China, immigration and customs is relatively straightforward. If you had to guess the political system of a country based on the border control procedures you’d probably guess the United States is authoritarian.