Cuba - In early 2017 we were able to travel to Cuba to visit my wife's extended family in the Guantanamo city area. 

We stayed at the Hotel Guantanamo, which is inside the city. It has an open air lobby, just like resorts I've visited for work in Mexico and Dominican Republic. But it has a more urban vibe. There's an elementary school on one side, a park/square at the front and a neighborhood behind. And it's not near the ocean.

My brother-in-law, his son and I played music in the lobby and out on the dining patio. We took 3 guitars that we gave to churches in the area a day or so before we left.

One of the highlights for me was being able to play a song with my brother-in-law one night in a second floor restaurant. An excellent singer and guitar player was performing that night in the restaurant, and he entertained us with traditional songs, plus some of his originals.

He heard that we were musicians, so he kindly asked if we wanted to play a something for him. Well, we just happened to have our guitars in the trunk of the 1950s Pontiac parked on the street below. Pretty cool. We only played one song, "Shaving and Daydreaming," restraining ourselves from taking over the gentleman's gig. From the blank stares we received from the folks around us, our Americana sound must have seemed pretty foreign to Cubans.

Later in the week, we traveled to a an ocean resort in Guardalavaca. At a rest stop along the way, a troubadour played songs. Both musicians are featured in the video and their interpretations of "Guantanamera" are the soundtrack.

At the resort, a Canadian woman told us she and her husband had been coming to Cuba for many years, and we were the first Americans she had met there.

I've heard people say that they would like to visit Cuba before it's Americanized. 

I understand what they mean. There's almost no advertising. No fast food. No seat belts in the old cars. Buses are pulled by semi-trailers. Bikes and motorcycles compete on the road with cars. Riding in a horse drawn carriage is not a novelty there. It's a legitimate transportation option. And that's in the city! Everywhere there are kids walking to and from school in their uniforms. 

Even if relations were completely normalized overnight, I don't think Cuba will be Americanized anytime soon.

It would be nice to have some decent ketchup in the hotel restaurants, though. They call it ketchup, but it's really some very thin, watery stuff that only hints at the real thing. I think if we go again, the next time I'll take a bag of Heinz Ketchup packets to leave behind. Who knows. I might start a... revolution.