James B.

Since my experience with AmoLatina is a bit off the beaten track to Colombia, I'll mention it here. I am a fluent Spanish speaking international student, 60-something who has lived years in Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The dating sites are fascinating and AmoLatina has an excellent ploy by not charging a membership and then cashing in later. After receiving a nice letter in English that was just too good, error-free, from a 26-year-old in Havana, I looked at her video, for what, $8 I guess. Just so lovely! Since I had planned to go to Cuba this summer to take some classes, I responded with a couple of letters and some pretty specific small talk in Spanish about what's happening in her life and in Cuba. I also searched the site to discover that she is one of only two gals from Cuba and that both of their videos were shot on the same balcony. There are no AmoLatina tours to Cuba, right, and for an American to get in there is only now getting a little easier and then only 30 days at a time within an academic year. Yes, I did get letters back from whoever responds, some very long, but with no relevance to anything I had mentioned, such as my class dates and monumental meeting places around the University of Havana, which she would have known. Now, if my emails were censored or not, I have no idea, but her last letter regrettably explained that even within the AmoLatina routine, there is no way she will be able to meet with me, since, all of a sudden, she has a way to escape Cuba and go to Canada to work for an aunt, who she never mentioned. She does hope however, that we can continue to communicate through the web site. Well, amigo, figure the odds! The positive reviews of the site do come from guys who have made the Colombian and other tours to meet gals in pretty controlled visits, which strike me as very expensive, since for the same money I can get a full semester anywhere in Latin America, meet some real intelligent gals, do some interesting stuff, and have a 6-month student visa which allows me to drive a US-plated car down to where ever without too much paper work. The chat-video-email aspect of these sites has to be viewed as entertainment and little else. People in the US do pay hundreds of dollars to go to a football game and are equally disappointed when their team doesn't win.