Bienvenidos. To the Cuban families who have made a home in Guyana, and to every one of you who has ever been made to feel that the door of the world was closed: this one is written for you. You have been told, in a hundred quiet ways, that a Cuban passport does not travel. Let me show you how much of the world it actually opens.
The road never ran through America
Start with the thing that changes the whole picture. For most travellers, choosing a route that avoids the United States is a preference. For a Cuban, it was never a choice at all. A Cuban passport cannot use the American ESTA system, and entry to the United States is closed in all but the rarest cases. So when the rest of the world frets about US visas and US layovers, understand that you were already living beyond all that.
That is not a disadvantage here. It is the whole premise. We built a travel house that treats the United States as if it were not on the map, and for you, it never really was. You do not start this journey behind other travellers. On this one road, you start ahead of them.
Where your passport actually opens
Here is what our own border data says, and it is worth reading slowly. A Cuban passport reaches 105 destinations without ever setting foot in an embassy: thirty of them with no visa at all, thirty more with a visa on arrival, and forty-five on a simple e-visa. Look at your own passport, country by country, and the map is wider than the fear.
Look at the shape of it:
- Your own region, right here. From Guyana, much of the Caribbean is open to you with no visa: Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Dominica, and more. The nearest doors are already unlocked.
- Russia and the old friends. A Cuban passport enters Russia with no visa at all, along with a string of countries across central Asia and eastern Europe that have kept their doors open to Cuba for decades.
- Asia, wide open. Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal and Mongolia, among others, on visa-free entry or a simple e-visa.
- Africa, welcoming. Rwanda, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia, the Seychelles, Ghana and Egypt among the many that ask little or nothing of a Cuban traveller.
None of it, not one line of it, requires a US visa or a US airport.
From Georgetown, start with the near doors
You do not have to begin with the far side of the world. Living in Guyana puts some of the easiest travel on earth within a short flight. A weekend in Trinidad, a few days in Barbados, a wedding or a funeral or a business meeting anywhere in the CARICOM Caribbean, most of it with no visa and no fuss. Let the near doors build your confidence, and the far ones stop looking so far.
And the road home to Cuba
I know that for many of you, one journey matters more than all the rest, and it is the one home. You can reach Havana from Georgetown without ever touching the United States, routing through Panama, Georgetown to Panama City to Havana, so that seeing your mother, your children, your island, never depends on a country that would turn you back at its own gate. Price the trip home now, and let us find you the cleanest way to the people you miss.
Join The Circle. It is free, and it is yours
Here is my invitation, and I mean it plainly. The Circle is our free membership, and it was made for travellers exactly like you. Your name and your email, no fee and no password, and in return you get member rates, our journey planner that filters out the United States on every search, help arranging the travel insurance that visas require, and a house that specialises in precisely the kind of travel a Cuban passport needs, because for us it is not the exception, it is the whole business.
For a people so often told to wait outside, there is something worth having in simply being invited in. Join The Circle here, take your place, and let us go to work on the world for you.
La puerta está abierta
So to our Cuban neighbours in Guyana: the door is open, wider than they told you. Your passport is not the locked thing you were made to believe. There are a hundred countries and more that would be glad to receive you, an island home you can reach without begging anyone's permission, and a small circle of us here who would be honoured to help you go.
Bienvenidos. Join us, or write to me with the journey that has been sitting in your heart, and let us begin.