Jillian Worrall
Bypassed the government hotels for casa stays and fell in love with Cuba all over again.
It didn’t look at all prepossessing from the street – a lofty double door, brown paint-chipped and peeling. Across the street a neighbour, bare-chested and in shorts, sat on his doorstep, grandson beside him. One door away two teenagers in muscle-shirts set up an old boombox on the narrow footpath.
Inside, however, a white marble staircase, walls lined with a mosaic of multi-coloured stones wound up two storeys, ending at a door into Roberto’s casa particular – a bed and breakfast - in Havana Vieja, the oldest part of Havana, Cuba’s capital, and a Unesco World Heritage site.
Ahead was a semi-open terrace, open to the skies two further storeys above. White-painted wrought iron rocking chairs and potted plants and a vast mural filled the space. Roberto, in fluro orange overalls showed me my room – a bed with a sheet (when it’s 35C even the sheet can be superfluous) and my en-suite bathroom.
Cubans, under their communist government, have been able to rent out rooms since the 1990s but it is only in the past few years, especially since the United States has started to lift restrictions on its citizens travelling to Cuba, and as online booking became possible, that they have proliferated.
During my previous three visits to Cuba I’d used government-run hotels, and had mostly been unimpressed, especially as many hotels were well outside the historic centres of most of the towns I was visiting.
But now I was in the heart of the action. In the morning, Roberto’s wife Maria served up fresh mango juice, a plate of tropical fruit, followed by an omelette and Cuban coffee.
It was time to hit the street. My neighbour was back on his doorstep. We waved and smiled. About 20 metres away my street ended in Plaza Cristo, the centrepiece of which is an 18thcentury church.
On one side of the square was the bici-taxi rank. Streets here are