A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back - in the heart of Old Havana

in the heart of Old Havana

A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back

Sam and Alex Fortescue

Fri 29 Apr 2011 13:17

Havana. Or La Habana as Cubans call it, as if to underline that it's the only one.

Local celebrity Ernest Hemingway had plenty to say on the subject, and I have no desire to try competing with him. His mark is everywhere in Old Havana. Between cocktails and fishing for marlin, he seems to have kept himself quite busy. But his home here was actually out in a leafy suburb.

Alex and I are staying in a 'casa particulare', which is a room in someone's home. For about £20 a night, we can sleep in the crumbling heart of Old Havana, a short walk from the home of the daiquiri and with mojito joints at every point of the compass. The famous Malecon, a 7km promenade along the seafront that is particularly popular around sunset, is nearby too. The buildings here are splendid, though often dilapidated. Magnificent colonial palacios have been divided up between numerous families, whose washing hangs drying from a regal balcony, while a matriarch watches the world passing below. There is many a glimpse of a filthy marble stairway inside dingy courtyards and many generously proportioned buildings have been turned into mingy little offices with the arbitrary addition of breeze block walls and hanging ceilings.

There is a decided perkiness to the Cubans here, who seem mostly curious about the strangely attired tourists in their midst. That said, there are plenty of touts and scammers ready to fall on the unwary. A favourite ruse seems to be the story that a member of the Buena Vista social club is playing a big salsa concert nearby. You are then invited to a bar or cafe for them to write out the 'invitation' for you, and expected to ply a suddenly multiplying group of people with coffee or drinks. Luckily, this trick is identically worded every time, so it doesn't take a genius to spot.

So far, in a whistle stop tour of the capital thus far, we've been to the extraordinary Museum of the Revolution, where everything from Fidel catching a cold to an outbreak of swine fever is blamed in the CIA, and the Partagas cigar factory, where hundreds toil for eight hours a day to hand roll $5, $10 and $20 cigars for about a dollar a day. This morning, we're going to see the Cuban Fine Art Museum, conveniently just opposite

Team Teddington, aka Timo, Edmund and Dom, left last night on a (much delayed) flight back to London and are much missed. havana seems to be a far quieter place without them, although meals have speeded up somewhat! We've had a number of excellent blow out meals here in some charming spots, and I think we're going to retreat back to more normal (and fiscally responsible - George Osborne would be proud) eating arrangements. We'll be here in Havana for another day or so before heading west on the bus to the tobacco-growing centre of Cuba around Vinales. It is said to boast spectacular hilly scenery as well.

Back on the beach