In 1959, Dan and Marcia Cohen were booked on a honeymoon cruise to Havana. The day before they were to leave, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro rolled tanks into the city.
Fifty-three years later -- this summer -- they finally got their Cuba honeymoon by joining a tour sponsored by the Tempe Chamber of Commerce.
As newlyweds, the Cohens had been at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, ready for a four-night cruise to Havana to visit casinos and see some shows.
"The day before the cruise, the Miami Herald headline said, 'Castro's tanks on outskirts of Havana,' " Dan Cohen said.
The San Tan Valley-area residents had not given up on one day making the trip and jumped at a rare chance to finally see Cuba on the tour, which was allowed under a people-to-people license issued by the U.S. government. Restrictions on travel to Cuba eased in 2011.
Cohen said a highlight of the trip was visiting the home of author Ernest Hemingway and seeing the patrol boat Hemmingway used to look for German submarines in World War II.
"It was magnificent grounds," Cohen said.
The Americans saw a lot of cars from the 1950s there, with their long-lasting diesel engines.
"At one of our stops by a cathedral, there was a beautifully maintained Chevy, a '55 or '56," Cohen said. "It had 450,000 miles."
Still, he said, a common mode of transportation was horse and buggy, often serving as crowded taxis.
Music was among the draws of Cuba, and it did not disappoint, Cohen said.
"And the laughter. The people ... didn't have much to enjoy, but they were making the most of it," he said. "At night, when we'd open the windows in the hotel, we heard nothing but music and dancing and singing."
Still, he was aware of repression by the Cuban government. Before he worked in security in Las Vegas, he had a career in counterespionage in the Air Force, so in Cuba, he said he recognized propaganda and discovered how Cubans are misled.
An American asked the Cuban guide what she thought of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where the U.S. is holding terrorism suspects. From the guide's answer, the group surmised that the Cuban government had told its citizens that the photos of the abuses by U.S. service members in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had been taken at Guantanamo.
Many Cubans don't have access to the Internet, but it was available in tourist hotels. But in other ways the hotels weren't so modern. The Arizona group's hotel had 20 floors and six elevators, of which no more than three were operating, and at one time, only one elevator was functioning.
The Americans weren't prevented from talking with Cubans. "We were certainly allowed to mingle with the people," Cohen said. "What surprised me, considering they blame the U.S. for the poverty they're living in ... they showed no animosity to the American tourists."
However, Cohen said that at stops for programs, three or four people lurked in corners and observed, people he thought were government minders.
The Arizonans found Cuba a place so hot and humid that the climate affected camera batteries.
But they marveled at the craftsmanship. They visited a tobacco farmer who told them the government takes 90 percent of his crop, so profit comes from making cigars for tourists. He also made a doll that looked like a Southern belle, with layers of big skirts that were lacquered tobacco leaves.
Cohen found Cubans inventive in finding ways to make money, such as the woman who followed tourist buses and collected empty water bottles to sell to recyclers.
The Cohens' biggest disappointment was seeing the facades of once-elegant buildings that were dilapidated and grimy with paint chipping off.
"All we could imagine was what we missed by not going in 1959," Cohen said.
