My heart is in old Havana
Jill Worrall explores Cuba, one of our must-see spots for 2018.
It’s late in the evening in Havana, Cuba, where architectural magnificence and decayed grandeur rub shoulders, and music throbs from bars on almost every corner.
I’m in Habana Viejo, old Havana, where restoration now seems to be outpacing ruin.
Street lights are few and far between, but it doesn’t matter much because light is streaming out of the bars and restaurants.
Music is pouring out, too – a plaintive trumpeter in a crammed bar competes for attention against the opposition just a few metres away, where three young women singers with big voices and tiny skirts are belting out Besame Mucho (Kiss Me a Lot).
Only a block away there’s not so much noise but just as much life. This part of Havana is largely car free – although the ubiquitous bicitaxis (bicycle rickshaws) still roam at will, sometimes with their own on-board sound systems to fill in any quiet spots.
So, thanks to little motorised traffic (most Cubans don’t own cars) the streets of Habana Viejo belong to the people.
In the relative cool of the evening everyone seems to be outside. There are kids playing football, babies in pushchairs, grannies in rocking chairs, cool teenage boys with ancient boomboxes, girls showing that Lycra is alive and skintight in the Caribbean.
And this is what I love the best about Cuba – life as Cubans live it. Sure, the architecture that encompasses Spanish Colonial, Baroque, Neo-Classical, Art Noveau and Art Deco is fantastic; the history is as swashbuckling and as full of intrigue and drama as were the pirates who used to pillage its coast; and don’t forget cheap lobster and even cheaper cocktails.
But what makes Cuba so special is that travellers can, if they want, be totally immersed in Cuban daily life.
I could spend days just wandering the streets of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos, Camaguey or Baracoa (Trinidad, a six-hour drive east of Havana, is perfectly preserved but the one place in Cuba where tourism has rather overtaken the historic centre).
I like dodging the bicitaxis, catching a whiff of beans and rice cooking up for dinner, finding murals dedicated to Che or with the quotes from Fidel, a glimpse of a chandelier in a room where small trees are sprouting from the roof above.
The over-worked word vibrant is totally apt for life in Cuba.
It’s not that life is easy for most of the population, who live on low wages and sometimes very basic housing.
Work on the older, historic buildings has improved living conditions for many but in rural areas, there are houses with earth floors and outside loos.
And there are still ration shops offering government-subsidised basic supplies from rice to soap.
However, while consumer goods might be lacking, what the Cubans still have is a sense of community, where neighbours stand on doorsteps of an evening catching up on the day’s events; where elderly men sit on benches in the plazas and chat and people play ruthless games of dominoes set up on tables on the footpath.
And almost everything that goes on takes place to a musical soundtrack.