A Cuban identified on TikTok as @bisbelis posted a video last Wednesday recorded from a cruise ship sailing very close to the coast of Havana, and her excited reaction went viral in just a few days.
In the three-minute and five-second clip, Bisbelis films the Havana coastline while exclaiming: “little Cuba, little Cuba, little Cuba, little Cuba, so close for my mom to see, look at this, my God, incredible.”
The phrase says it all: the author records the video so that her mother, presumably in Cuba, can see the cruise ship passing by her city.
From the deck of the ship, Bisbelis identifies out loud the most recognizable landmarks of the Havana coastline: the Hotel Meliá Habana, in Miramar; the Riviera Hotel, by the Malecón in Vedado; and the Neptune and Triton fountain, on 3rd Avenue in Miramar, which he excitedly repeats: "Neptune and Triton, Neptune and Triton, Neptune and Triton."
"I see it clearly at the Meliá Habana, at the Meliá Habana it's very clear," he says as the camera focuses on the building from the sea.
He also mentions the Plaza de la Revolución, which he says can be seen from that distance, and he can't help but compare the stroll to other destinations: "the Malecón in Havana was a lot prettier to visit than going to the Bahamas, a thousand times."
The video accumulated over 261,000 views, 11,000 likes, 700 comments, and 2,654 shares, figures that reflect how much this scene resonates with the Cuban diaspora.
Bisbelis also lets slip, with barely concealed nostalgia, that the situation wasn’t always this way: "There used to be cruises," she says, and adds with resignation, "And what happened? The same."
Your comment refers to a recent story: between 2016 and 2019, lines such as Royal Caribbean and Carnival operated routes that included a stop in Havana, allowing Cuban-Americans to reunite with the island from a cruise. The sanctions strengthened by the Trump administration in 2019 brought those stops to an end.
Since then, passing close by without being able to disembark has become a bittersweet experience that Cuban emigrants frequently document on social media.
In October 2025, a video recorded from the Oasis of the Seas by Royal Caribbean while cruising near Cuba on its way to Mexico sparked a massive wave of nostalgia with comments like "so close and yet so far."
In January 2026, another viral video of the MSC Seaside showed Cubans celebrating a party with shared music on board, prompting mixed reactions.
The video by Bisbelis taps into that same emotional vein, but adds an intimate element that sets it apart: it is not recorded for the general audience, but for a specific person across the sea.
"To let my mom see it" captures, in five words, the daily struggle of thousands of Cuban families separated by emigration, where children abroad seek to create visual connections with their loved ones on the island.
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