She also met her great-uncle, second cousin and twin 16-year-old third cousins who, she was surprised to know, listen to the same music as American teenagers (Kanye West, Chance the Rapper and Chris Brown).
Ms. Hernandez shared with her Cuban family stories and photographs of her Cuban-American family. "When I met them, it was as if I knew them my entire life," she said. "It was surreal."
When Ms. Hernandez first told her parents she would be going on the trip, the conversation turned to yelling. "Why would you want to go there?" she said her parents said. "They're going to show you the nice tourist parts."
After the trip, they were calmer and looked at the videos and photographs she took. "They were glad that some things have changed, and that I saw the real Cuba instead of just lying on a beach to sip mojitos like most tourists," she wrote in an email. "On the other hand, they were upset about the island's physical decay."
Steven Andrew Garcia, a photographer and video director in Los Angeles, went on the CubaOne trip, too. His father was not thrilled. Like many Cuban exiles, Mr. Garcia's father is deeply distrustful of the Cuban government and feared for his son's safety.
"My dad questioned who would be financing and coordinating this trip," said Mr. Garcia, 29. When he made it clear to his father that he had made his decision and intended to go, his father urged him to be careful, telling him, "Just stay with the group and don't get lost."
Photo Steven Andrew Garcia, 29, of Los Angeles visiting his family's old home in the neighborhood of La Vibora in Havana. He also traveled with CubaOne, but his father was not happy about his visit. Credit via CubaOne Foundation
Vanessa Garcia, now a 37-year-old writer (who is not related to Mr. Garcia), learned the hard way that her mother would take issue with her traveling to Cuba. Back in 2009, taking advantage of the new law that permitted Cuban-Americans with relatives living in Cuba to visit the island, Ms. Garcia bought a plane ticket to Havana with her sister, and then told her mother, Jackie Diaz-Sampol, about the trip they were going to take in a few weeks.
"She got so, so, so red and had a vein popping out of her head," Ms. Garcia said of her mother, "and she said: 'I am going to have a heart attack. You are going to kill your mother.' I tore my tickets, even though we paid $500 for each of them and they were nonrefundable, and threw them down the toilet. I couldn't do that to my mom."
Ms. Diaz-Sampol, now 60, said she fretted over the prospect of her daughter going because she worried about her physical safety. "She was naïve, in my opinion, thinking you could go to Cuba like any other country," she said.
They reached a détente of sorts in 2014, when the mother and daughter traveled back to Cuba together. (And when Ms. Garcia decided to travel to Cuba last May, she hatched a plan to avoid maternal interference: She waited until the night before she left to tell her mother and stepfather of her plans.)
Not all first-generation Cuban-Americans are eager to visit. For Michelle Marie Arean, a 35-year-old associate editor at Recommend, a travel trade publication based in Miami, the stories she grew up hearing, about government raids of the family home and how her grandfather was exiled to a sugar cane farm where he was abused, were enough to turn her off. "I wouldn't want to give money and support to a government that took so much away from my family," she said. She said she would go if the leader is ousted.
It's a stance that baffles her non-Cuban friends and colleagues, she said. "It's opened my eyes to how many people who are not of Cuban descent simply do not understand what our families went through," she said.
Many of those who are opposed to visiting Cuba say they would change their minds if there were a new, non-Communist government. But Aliza Wechsler, 31, has a different condition: She will travel there only if her mother, who left Cuba when she was 7, goes, too.
"I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't go with her and see it through her eyes," said Ms. Wechsler, who lives in New York. At least a few times a month, she said, she calls or emails her mother to ask her if they can start to plan a trip.
Ms. Wechsler's mother, Lily Wechsler, a 63-year-old banker in Miami, said she would like to visit Cuba with her daughter, in a few years when prices become more reasonable.
But just as Aliza wishes to travel there with her, Lily wishes to return to Cuba with her oldest sister, who escaped Cuba when she was 20, immediately after her honeymoon. But her sister, Lily said, refuses to go back.
"We do disagree," she said. "I do try to convince her. Ideally I would want to go with her because just like Aliza is waiting to go with me so I can make the experience meaningful, for me, I would have loved to go with her because she would have given it a lot more meaning."
She added, "But that's not going to happen unless both Castros die tomorrow and communism stops."
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