Road Trip to Guantanamo (2009)

Two guys journey to the east end of Cuba, to see for themselves what's going on over there.

I first traveled to Cuba in 2001, just after I graduated college, and just after September 11th. It was one of my first experiences outside of the U.S. and it changed the way that I saw travel, history, culture, class, and politics. I'd been wanting to return for years, and in June of 2009, I went back for a second time.

I traveled with my good buddy Tyler... and we strung together a short film about our trip when we got back home. On the ground in Havana, we had maybe three different ideas of what our short film could be about... but in the end we decided to keep it simple and forgo complicated political discussion or commentary. We simply tell he story of what we did... and show how normal and uneventful was our trip to Guantanamo Bay.

Havana is an amazing city, and Cuba is an amazing nation. Its geographically close to the United States, yet politically distant. Americans and Cubans are both fascinated with one-another, and yet... we know almost nothing about how the other side lives. Relations between our two countries are bound to change, and I'm sure that in a few decades, our little road trip to Guantanamo Bay will seem pretty pedestrian. But in 2009, we were some of the first unauthorized Americans to get a glimpse of that town for maybe 60 years.