ROBERT DREWE, novelist Unpacking: Cuba, p175

The writer always wondered what it was about Cuba that attracted and intrigued the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn and Al Capone. “Sure, Havana is a sensual treat,” Drewe says, “but in the coastal resort town of Varadero, everything came together in the Hotel Internacional: 24-hour Mojitos, bristly pork chunks, mankinis – and a bullet hole in our bedroom window.” He describes the experience in our new travel column, Unpacking.