BY ELAINE DE VALLE

 Phones at ABC Charters went wild Friday after news broke that the U.S. House of Representatives
 had voted to ease enforcement of travel restrictions to Cuba.

 ``A lot of Americans thought this was it -- that they could go tomorrow,'' said owner Vivian Mannerud,
 whose company has been licensed to fly directly to Cuba since 1982.

 ``We tell them this is not over. It does not mean you can travel. It still has to go to the Senate and `Call
 your senator.' ''

 Thursday's vote doesn't end travel restrictions for Americans, but it would take the
 teeth out of the ban by denying funds for enforcement. The measure still must
 pass the Senate, and President Clinton has threatened to veto the bill because it
 would take away his power to issue sanctions.

 Calls increased at the Center for Cuban Studies in New York, though they are
 used to Americans wanting to fly for a weekend in Havana.

 ``They want to go on vacation. They heard it's a beautiful country. Some of them
 went on their honeymoons in the '50s, and they want to go back,'' said Naomi
 Friedman, associate director of the nonprofit group. It specializes in authorized
 educational tours and individual travel for those who have Treasury Department
 licenses.

 ``Most people don't even realize that you can't travel to Cuba if you wanted to go,''
 she said.

 EXILES ANGERED

 In Miami, Cuban exiles were more angered by a measure to ease enforcement of
 the ban against food and medicine sales than they were about possible increased
 tourist travel. Feelings aren't as adamant over the travel ban -- as evidenced by
 the 74,000 Cubans who went to Cuba last year on direct flights and many more
 who flew through third countries.

 Democracy Movement leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez said, however, that the same
 people pushing for open travel by Americans should support travel by Cubans who
 are sometimes denied visas to their homeland based on their ideology or
 activism.

 ``I believe in generating people-to-people contact. But what we have seen up to
 now is very far from that,'' said Sánchez, who has been denied a visa.

 ``We must ask for a visa as if we were foreigners in our own land and the visa is
 selectively given,'' he said. ``A lot can be done to change that, especially by the
 forces working to lift the embargo.''

 Mannerud said only about 1 percent of Cubans who apply for visas are denied.
 ``We have people who fought in the Bay of Pigs who get visas. They [the Cuban
 government] are more concerned with people who have recently left the island
 than people who have been here 30 years,'' she said.

 ``We are basically doing now what the Cuban government always did. When the
 United States wanted Cuban Americans to visit their families [under the Carter
 administration], then the Cubans would only allow 50 a week into their country.

 ONCE A YEAR

 ``Now we flip-flop. Now we are the ones who say you can only go once a year.''

 One Southwest Dade man said he went to Cuba three times last year and three
 times so far this year -- once each year legally and twice more through the airport
 in Cancun.

 ``It's incredible the amount of people you see there. It's like being in the Miami
 airport or the Havana airport in Cancun. The only thing they need is a Cuban
 coffee shop,'' said Raul, 57, an American citizen who doesn't want his last name
 published because of possible repercussions.

 Some 82,000 passengers traveled legally to Cuba last year after obtaining
 licenses from the Treasury Department, a department official said. She didn't
 know how manyrequests were denied. ``The vast majority [74,000] are for family
 reunification, followed by research and then education.''

 SANCTIONS STUDY

 One researcher is Jonathan Coleman, 38, an economist in Havana Friday on a
 fact-finding mission. He was hired by the U.S. government to evaluate the
 sanctions' impact on the two nations in a study that could guide future American
 policy on the issue.

 ``This study is substantially significant,'' said John Kavulich, president of the
 U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a business-funded educational
 organization that studies the island's economy. The organization takes no public
 stance on the embargo.

 Kavulich projects U.S. citizens traveling annually to Cuba on an unrestricted basis
 could reach three million to five million.

 Friedman, of the Center for Cuban Studies, also thinks the traffic would be huge.
 ``People will say, `We want to get there before McDonald's comes in.' They want
 to do it while Castro is still there and before the Miami Cubans go back.' ''

 Herald translator Renato Pérez and the Associated Press contributed to this
 report.