I’ve been to PR. I liked it. It’s a nice tropical island with beaches lined with coconut trees and medieval castles of the Spanish Main. In rural areas (which is a major part of PR that you can’t miss because it’s so different from downtown San Juan), sometimes you do have to stop and wait for the chickens to cross the road (no really, they do do that). It is also a big AmericaTown with a KFC and CVS on every corner. They use US money, and since there are no visa or passport checks, it doesn’t even feel like foreign travel.
To make an analogy, if someone wanted to see Copenhagen but you suggested “Why not Oslo? It’s still Scandinavian.”, would that be reasonable? Could there be reasons to visit a place other than just to see a random example of a broad culture spectrum?
That’s fine and a good reason. But if someone had not yet traveled to PR, but just wanted to got to Cuba to see a Caribbean island, I’d say try PR first. See my point? Some people really dont have a good reason to go to Cuba,
Heck, if a Californian wanted to go to Scandinavia, I’d ask if they had visited Solvang first, too.
I currently work with sugarcane, actually, so I could probably figure out some entirely legit work reasons to spend some time in Cuba under the academic exception.
That’s a (perfectly valid) way of looking at travel that is nearly entirely opposite of the reasons why I travel.
I travel because I’m fascinated with learning about different ways of life. Different cultures, different languages, different ways of living. I feel a strong desire to see firsthand, as best I can in my limited lifetime, the breadth of the human experience. How are we the same? How are we different? What is it LIKE there? What stories do people have to tell?
So Solvang and PR are of really limited interest to me. I already have a pretty good idea of what it’s like there. Being more like home is a huge negative to me, not a selling point
Now if I just want to relax on at an all-inclusive, sure just go someplace cheap and close. But I think most people who would go through the trouble of traveling to Cuba probably want to go there specifically for a reason stronger than “I dunno, somewhere Caribbeanish.”
I see that point. It seems that some people want to go to Cuba now simply because they can–or will be able to, soon–and because it was “forbidden” before. You have to wonder if–for someone who’s just going to lie on a beach–they would even know the difference. As far as I’m concerned, the music of Puerto Rico has sucked ever since “salsa” from US producers became primarily such unmitigated, commercialized crap in the mid 90s. Cuba is about the only place where afro caribbean popular music is still innovative.
Opinion in the UK, so far as it exists, is go there before the ‘dammed’ Americans ruin it. My putative son-in-law was there last year on a cycling holiday and he, a seasoned traveller, rated it high on any list of great places to go. The people were very welcoming and although poor by Western standards, they, at least the ones he met, seemed to have a good quality of life.
My advice - go, but before the developers move in a turn it into yet another Costa del money.