Above the water we could count nine layers of portholes and plate glass (photographer David Guttenfelder and I had rooms on board for the week, somewhere on level four), and I thought that from a Cuban perspective the whole gleaming white hulk must loom like a massive billboard: Here Come the Americans. They brought a spool of line and some shrimp pieces for bait, and they were side by side on the crowded seawall with their fishing line in the water, gazing at the docked ship, when they shoved over to make room for me.įrom out here, surrounded as we were by Cubans holding up tablets and smartphones to mug for selfies with the Adonia, the ship looked to me like the biggest object on the whole Havana seafront. They are neighbors in a sagging Havana building not far from the terminal Lydia had heard so much on the news about the histórico ship arrival that they walked over to see it for themselves. “ Amiga, come sit between us,” Javier and Lydia demanded.

And now in Havana the celebrations were so exuberant, once we made our way into the city’s passenger ship terminal, that the currency exchange booth clerk and I shouted at each other in Spanish through the glass. A lone protest motorboat had chugged around with “Democracia” painted in defiant red along the hull, but that was all. cruise ship to dock in Cuba in nearly four decades might fire up anti-Castro hostilities.

None of us had known what to expect as we left Miami on Sunday afternoon, there’d been speculation that the first U.S. On warm evenings Cubans always populate the Malecón, but this was something new-nine in the morning, and crowds seemed to have gathered, lofting flags of their own, waving. Now we could make out the Malecón, the seawall and walkway that serves as a collective front porch for people seeking fresh air or respite from overcrowded households. Somebody handed out little Cuban and American flags. The ship’s topmost deck was jammed with television crews the rest of us mashed up against the railings on the next deck down.

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