Cuba is a very exciting country that has had an amazing history filled with both wonder and sadness. The country came in to existence in 1902 after being dominated by outside forces for centuries. In 1959 another revolutionary change brought about the current socialist government which is undergoing slow change. Tourism from all points of the globe (except from the United States which does not recognize that Cuba exists) has provided a positive force in Cuba and helped to alleviate the suffering of much of the population.

Havana - The Santa Clara Convent was founded in 1644. Although now the Residencia Academica for student groups, the orginal cells and burial sites for the nuns still exist. The Cathedral was begun in the 18th century. Several days of the week there are handicraft markets in front of the Cathedral. The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes has a fine dispay of Cuban and some foreign art. The museum will be closed unil mid-2001. Parque Central is a very pleasing park and excellent fro a stroll. The park has a monument of Jose Marti. The Museo de la Ciudad is the city's museum and has a good cross section of material both on Havana and Cuba. The Presidential Palace, which is quite an ornate building, is now the Museo de la Revolucion. The Museo Nacional de Musica has musical artifacts from all over the world.

Verdadero - The Municipal Museum which houses historical material fromthe area and the Centro Recreativo Josone - a large park with a pool - are the principle non beach activies here. Outside of town are a number of very new and good hotels which are presently catering to Europeans and South Americans.

Santa Clara - This was the last stronghold of Batista during the Revolution and the site of teh last battle. The captured Batista troop train is on display in the city. A monument and museum dedicatyed to Che Guevara was erected in 1994.

Cienfuegos - This is an an attractive port about 50 miles from Santa Clara. The Palacio de Ferrer, which is now the Casa de Cultura, has an attrcative tower with great views of the area. The Museo Provincial has historical artifacts from the surrounding area.

Capital: Havana

Population: 11,000,000

Area: 44, 222 square miles

Language: Spanish

Time: Same time as New York

Electricity: 110 volts AC / Same as US

Shopping: Shops open as early as 8 am and close at about 6 pm. Shops which are associated with tourism tend only to be around hotels and are not in city centers. Please note that US citizens are not allowed to bring anything with an origin of Cuba into the United States. US law forbids US citizens from spending money in Cuba.

Food and Drink: Cuban food is quite good but is on the pricey side. Tourists usually visit Cuba on package programs in which meals are included are taken at the hotel. Please note that US law forbids US citizens from spending money in Cuba. This includes food.

Social: Cubans ar every curious of Americans. They are particularly friendly and open. They choose not to discuss politics but do talk about their families and life through which many conclusions may be drawn. Most Cubans do not speak English but they will try to talk with you.

Business: US law forbids US citizens to spend money in Cuba or engage in business transactions in or with Cuba in any way whatsoever.

After years of relative isolation the island of Cuba has launched itself into the international tourist trade and it’s offering more than just beaches and five-star resorts. Lounging at the top of the Caribbean, Cuba has well developed beach resorts offering the full range of watersports and excellent big game fishing. But Cuba is more than just a beach.

Cuba is an island steeped in history with a vibrant population and an eclectic mix of music styles. Despite the shortages brought about by the US boycott the Cuban people seem unreasonably happy and welcoming. When pressed they generally said that life might be hard, but before Fidel, (he is only called Castro in the West) it was worse. Cuba averages one doctor for every 260 people, has the lowest infant mortality rates in Latin America and virtually 100% literacy. Before the revolution the average Cuban had nothing. This is the reason that, despite mistakes and certain excesses, the Cuban government has held onto power for so long.

The US boycott started after Fidel Castro overthrew the corrupt Batista regime and nationalised American property. This included gambling joints and brothels owned by the Mafia. Conspiracy theorists have linked this with the assassination of Kennedy. Certainly both the Mob and the CIA thought he was soft on Castro. Since the revolution there has been one invasion attempt sponsored by the CIA and dozens of assassination attempts on Castro.

For the tourist the US boycott can be a blessing in disguise. Firstly, although the US State department doesn’t actually forbid Americans from travelling to Cuba, under the obviously titled “Trading With the Enemy Act” they are not allowed to spend any money when they get there. A holiday destination without Americans. What a novel concept. In Cuba if someone says “have a nice day” they mean it.

The boycott has also lead to a sense of a country languishing in the 1950’s. The streets of Cuba are packed with giant 1950s Dodges, Buicks and Chevrolets — many of them in surprisingly good condition. Stagger out of a restaurant after a filling meal and far too many cocktails into one of these cars running as a taxi and you feel like you are in a time warp. The prices are certainly 1950’s, with a bottle of rum costing as little as US$3 per bottle. This sense of history is carried over into many of the towns. None more so than Trinidad on the south coast of the island in Sancti Spiritus province, which has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site.

Trinidad has more museums than you could ever hope to visit. From the City Museum with a range of artifacts and furniture from down the years, through to the Museum for the Struggle Against Bandit Bands which commemorates the fight against CIA sponsored counter-revolutionaries in the mountains above Trinidad. The real museum however is outside in the network of cobbled streets — made up of ships ballast from sailing ships that came out from England to old Trinidad. A walk round these streets can be like a walk back in time.

A lilting birdsong floated across the cobbled streets which surrounded the ornate Plaza Mayor in the middle of the old town. A dark skinned man walked next to a wall painted pastel orange, a wicker cage held at arms length contained a couple of songbirds. I followed him for a couple of blocks, fascinated by the tradition of taking caged birds for an afternoon walk, something which happens nowhere else in Cuba. He stopped and talked for a while to an old man in a straw hat leading a donkey through the square.

My attention distracted, I turned down a narrow alleyway, crammed with stalls selling tourist souvenirs, towards the sound of a Salsa band. Five old men playing bongos, a double bass, guitars and claves — two wooden sticks which are banged together rhythmically in a three-two time.

An old man in a baseball hat advertising a German supermarket chain approached me and in perfect English offered me a meal in a private restaurant nearby. Private restaurants have sprung up all over Cuba.
People cook you a meal in their own homes which is a good way to sample true local cooking and see how local people live. I arranged to meet up with him in the main square at 8pm for dinner. The price was fixed at US$10 each. Dinner arrangements taken care of I decided to head to the local Bauza cigar factory to stock up on after-dinner smokes.

Hunched over dozens of small desks the cigar rollers were busy making cigars. A microphone at the front desk was pointed at the speaker of a battered old radio. These workers are so valued that the factory employs someone to read the newspapers to them from this desk. He was on his tea-break so they got the radio.

In a small room nearby the leaves are sorted by colour into bundles. These are passed onto the rollers who form them into loose bunches — roughly the size of a cigar but with no skin. These are inserted into grooved blocks before being loaded into a giant upright press. The huge wheel on the top is wound down to make a solid cylinder of tobacco.

When the cigars have been formed they are removed from the press and the overhanging leaves are slit off with a viciously sharp knife. The roller selects a flat leaf of tobacco complimentary in colour to the rolls of tobacco and slices it to shape. The leaf is held taught, rolled round the cigar in a deft movement then sealed in a rounded shape at the top with a dab of glue.
A good roller can make a cigar in about a minute. They are allowed to smoke as many as they like during the working day irrespective of the cost of the final product.
Cigars are far cheaper in Havana than in the UK — especially if you buy them in the street. Black market cigars are invariably fake. The only way to guarantee that you are getting the genuine article is to ignore the shady looking characters who hiss “Cohibas, Montecristos” at you and buy from an official shop or factory.

The boxes should be sealed with an official government seal although these are often faked on the street. If the seal has been tampered with then it is a safe bet the cigars have been as well.
For the record if you are offered a box of Cohiba Esplendidios you can check if they are genuine by bending them in half until the ends touch. They won't break if they are the real thing. A box of 25 Cohiba Esplendidios in London will set you back £470.

Clutching a handful of cigars I walked around trying to find a bar to kill time before dinner. Finding a bar can sometimes be difficult in downtown Trinidad. There are a couple of tourist “dollar bars” and various local bars serving bottled beer.
The first day I arrived was a Sunday evening and walking round looking for a place to eat and drink was fairly fruitless. In the end I settled for a side street bar run by a giant of a man whose gravelly voice was made to say “I shall drink your blood at midnight”. I was going to try to teach him this in English but decided against it.
Most of the tourist bars seemed closed as most people seem to visit Trinidad on a day trip from the coastal resort 10 kilometres away and come the night-time your options are fairly limited. That first night the whole town seemed strange and scary. The seemingly deserted cobbled streets and pastel coloured ancient buildings made the place seem like the set of some Transylvanian Dracula film and I was pleased to get back to the motel on the hill for a meal.

This evening though things were going better. I found an open bar and settled for a couple of wickedly strong Daiquiris before my 8pm rendezvous. From here I was taken around the corner and into a small house where I was served up a meal of Langostine with the ubiquitous Moros y cristianos. Rice and black beans. This was washed down with a huge jug of ice cold mango juice. As I ate the family sat around a giant TV set and caught up on the latest episode of a Brazilian soap opera. I pushed my chair back and joined the old man in smoking a cigar. As they were all very engrossed in the television I decided to give up the idea of conversation and go for a walk on my way back to the motel.

It was a hot night and most people had their windows and doors open. Everyone with a TV seemed to be watching the Brazilian soap with the volume turned full up. Those without a TV set crowded around the doors and windows and watched someone elses.
A few people looked round to say “Buenas Noches” to me as I walked by but in general I passed through Trinidad without disturbing it. With more and more tourists visiting Cuba I wonder how long people will be able to say that.

There comes a time when a destination becomes so “hot” that you just have to go there. One of the latest flavours of the month is Cuba, where even the Pope went this year. Dave Winter decided to follow in the holy footsteps and check it out.

I must confess that if I’m visiting a country I’ve never been to before, I’m an avid devourer of guidebooks. Not something that most “travellers” would admit to, though in light of John-Paul II’s recent trip to Cuba, perhaps I’m in the mood for confession.

It was with some interest, therefore, that I noticed that all three guidebooks I was carrying seemed to have an overriding obsession with the sex life of Cubans. In fact, one claimed that “having sex is a favourite occupation in Cuba. It is one of the few things on the island that cannot be rationed”.

Arrival at Havana’s Jose Marti Airport offered some explanation for this trait. With the exception of the white (soon to be pink) tourists arriving by the plane load from Europe, everyone else seemed gorgeous, radiating some sort of simmering sensuality.

Was that a saucy wink the immigration official gave me as she stamped my landing card, or had I allowed my imagination to run away with me? Is that a Cuban cigar in your pocket sir, or are you just pleased to see me? I mentioned the “wink” to my wife, but soon discovered the Antonio Banderas look-a-like who checked her passport had welcomed her with the same facial gesture. Friendly bunch, these Cubans. I wonder if the Holy Pontiff was greeted the same way.

Havana is a fine place to begin a visit to Cuba, largely because it remains one of the world’s last great unspoilt capitals. In many regards this lack of tacky modernisation, with no neon advertising, no McDonalds and few unsightly modern buildings, is largely due to a lack of finance and investment. For the residents of Havana this means over-crowded accommodation, crumbling infrastructure and over-stretched public services. For visiting tourists it is a window to the bygone world of the Spanish colonial cities of the Americas.

Though much of the old city, Habana Vieja, is part of an ambitious restoration project (attracting major foreign investment since being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982), the task of returning Havana to its former glory seems a never-ending one.

Thus, complete blocks of tastefully restored colonial residences, cathedrals and public squares stand cheek-to-jowl with former mansions now teeming with Cuban families living in overcrowded apartments. The contrast is stark but fascinating, and nobody can deny that Havana has a great vibrancy at the heart of its soul.

The focus of Habana Vieja is the 18th Century Cathedral de San Cristobal de La Habana, with its lively and colourful craft market in the square outside, plus the restored Plaza de Armas just to the southeast. For those who have worked up a thirst with their sightseeing, both are within walking distance of two of Ernest Hemmingway’s favourite watering holes.

He always took his mojito (rum, crushed ice, mint, lemon juice, carbonated water) at La Bodeguita del Medio, and his daiquiri (two jiggers of white rum, juice from half a grapefruit, six drops of maraschino, mixed until foaming) at El Floridita. Both bars are now firmly on the tourist trail and rather overpriced. It is possible, however, to find plenty of other bars in which to drink the day away.

Having spent several hours watching the world go by, the mojitos go down, and world’s most beautiful “working girls” go about their business, it was time to check out that other great Cuban institution — cigars. Just behind the impressive Capitolio Nacional building is the Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas, one of Havana’s oldest cigar factories. Cuba exports some 65 million cigars a year, all hand-rolled — though not necessarily on the thighs of dark-skinned peasant women, as some smokers fantasise.

Wandering around the Partagas factory, which employs about 400 people, it soon became apparent this is not the most interesting job in the world. To relieve the boredom (and thus keep up productivity), people are employed to read aloud to the staff as they work — “Castro’s Best Seven-hour Speeches” is rarely on the reading list.

The practice pre-dates the Revolution, and it has been found that reading texts extolling the virtues of communism and the valour of the proletariat has a profoundly negative effect on production. The factory workers are also allowed to “smoke as they work”, though few seem to take up the offer.

After seeing Cuban cigars being made, it seemed logical to visit the region where the country’s best tobacco is grown — Province of Pinar del Rio. Hiring possibly the world’s smallest car, we travelled southwest from Havana along the autopista Habana-Pinar del Rio, perhaps the world’s least busy motorway. Along this 178km road we were passed by nothing and saw just six vehicles.

Even with the embargo that causes petrol rationing, it was still strange to see an autopista without autos. Compare this to the cities where huge Plymouths and Studebakers from the glorious era of US motor manufacturing cruise the streets, their tail-fins and chrome gleaming as if they’ve just stepped out of a 1950’s Californian beach movie.

Our destination in Pinar del Rio was the village of Vinales, set in a fertile tobacco-growing valley amongst the Sierra de los Organos range. The scenery here is amongst the most dramatic in Cuba, with the valley floors broken by isolated steep-sided limestone hills known as mogotes.

I had seen stunning photos of this valley in just about every travel agent brochure, travel article or book about Cuba, and I realised that all these pictures had been taken from the swimming pool terrace of our hotel. At $25 a night for an air-conditioned double room, with such an exceptional view from the balcony, Hotel Los Jazmines must be one of the best value places you’ll ever stay in.

Cuba is a big island (more than 1250 km long), so those with limited time (and budgets) should not be over-ambitious about the amount of ground they attempt to cover. One place you should not miss, is the old colonial city of Trinidad, in the Province of Sancti Spiritus.

Founded in 1514 by Diego Velazquez as a base for his expeditions to the “New World”, this charming town seems hardly touched by the 20th Century. Its five main squares and four churches that date from the 18th and 19th Centuries are linked by cobbled streets, lined with brightly painted houses with red-tiled roofs. We stayed in one such house as paying guests with one of the growing number of Cuban families attempting to scrape a living through tourism.

With the monthly salary of a qualified teacher reaching just US$15 a month, it’s little wonder that many families are now renting out rooms in their homes to foreign tourists. For the visitor, not only does this provide cheap, good value accommodation (around $10 per night), it also opens up a window on everyday Cuban home life.

Our four days in the home of Maritza Hernandez were the most enjoyable of the whole trip. It also allowed us to sample some superb home cooking. Rationing makes eating out in Cuba something of a chore, so Maritza’s culinary efforts were most welcome.

Having come all the way to this Caribbean island, it seemed inconceivable not to spend some of our time just lounging around on one of Cuba’s famous beaches. Pure white sand and turquoise water has much to recommend it, and provided a fitting end to one of the most enjoyable trips I have ever made.

Come to Cuba, relax, get some sun, smoke a cigar, and if you don’t have some sex, at least think about it for a while.

Fact File