The port of Miami is gearing up to offer daily ferries to Cuba but the service could take a while to get underway because Cuba has yet to grant permits, a newspaper said Tuesday.

The port in this city that is home to half of the two million strong Cuban diaspora in the United States began preparations shortly after the United States and Cuba announced in December 2014 they would restore diplomatic ties after a half century of enmity dating back to the Cold War, the Miami Herald reported.

A group of 180 Cuban migrants took a step closer to their dream of a new life in the United States Wednesday after flying out of Costa Rica in a trial run designed to blaze a path for thousands of stranded compatriots to follow.

In what they nervously hope will be the successful conclusion to a months-long odyssey through South and Central America, the Cubans landed in El Salvador and then made it further north to Guatemala by bus after traveling through the night.

Costa Rica on Tuesday warned it should not be seen as an "open bridge" to America after striking a deal to start shipping out stranded Cuban migrants to other Central American countries.

"We do not have the resources" to take in any more Cuban migrants, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez told reporters.

Thirteen people were killed and 34 more injured Monday when two trucks retrofitted as passenger buses collided in eastern Cuba, local media reported.

The deadly crash took place in Santiago de Cuba province, Agencia Cubana de Noticias reported.

Central American countries on Monday agreed a breakthrough in the case of thousands of U.S.-bound Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica, after weeks of often acrimonious regional diplomacy.

In a meeting in Guatemala City, representatives from several of the countries said they would fly some of the Cubans to El Salvador, where they would be put on buses to cross Guatemala and enter Mexico.

A meeting Tuesday in Mexico City of representatives from the United States, Central America and Mexico failed to make a breakthrough on the situation of thousands of Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica, the foreign minister of that country said.

"Unfortunately the Guatemalan position was unchanged" from last Friday, when a meeting of Central American nations refused Costa Rica's call to allow the U.S.-bound Cubans passage north, Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez told reporters.

A summit of Central American leaders in El Salvador on Friday failed to break a regional impasse over the fate of 5,000 U.S.-bound Cuban migrants blocked in Costa Rica for weeks.

"There was no solution at this summit to the problem with the Cuban migrants. There was no consensus over what should be done -- each country has its own point of view on the matter," Nicaragua's deputy foreign minister, Denis Moncada, told AFP.

The United Nations' top human rights official on Tuesday condemned Cuba for arresting activists and urged authorities to release those held, describing the detentions as "arbitrary" and "harassment".

Cuba marked Human Rights Day on December 10 by detaining opposition activists or barring them from leaving their homes to prevent protests against the Communist authorities, according to rights groups.

Costa Rica's president landed in Havana Sunday amid mounting regional tension over the fate of thousands of Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica en route to the United States.

President Luis Guillermo Solis confirmed the issue would be part of his talks with Cuban counterpart Raul Castro but offered few other details on the two-day trip.

Cuba has handed over a fugitive wanted by the United States in a first such move since a diplomatic thaw between the former Cold War foes, officials said.

Shawn Wegmann fled to Cuba by boat and was detained by authorities there on October 31, who subsequently notified their U.S. counterparts.