Cuba - Go Before Castro Goes
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- Asia de Cuba (WC2N) (05/02/2006)
In the 1940s and 50s Frank Sinatra and his Mafia friends treated the sumptuous Hotel Naçional in Havana as their playground. Sinatra provided the cloak of respectability under which dodgy deals took place, and the rich and famous - including Winston Churchill - flocked to the hotspot to gamble, have fun and be seen.
Today, nearly 50 years after Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and their band of earnest men 'liberated' the island from the yoke of the robber barons, the hotel is once again the jetset's bolthole of choice.
And walking around this 1930s-designed shrine to art deco is magical - if not as a guest, at least as a witness to the some of the best mojitos to be had.
But the real, throbbing heart of Havana is a few kilometres down the Malecon seafront promenade in the old town - Habana Vieja. This is where it's all happening, where curvaceous women dance the salsa with elderly men on street corners, where your guide is likely to be a gynaecologist (guides earn more), and where crumbling buildings compete on the charm scale with the renovated Spanish colonial squares of this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
If the hotels in Habana Vieja are not quite in the style of the Naçional, there is surely some caché in having a room in the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where Ernest Hemingway is said to have written some chapters of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Renting a car is a relatively painless affair and certainly the best way to explore the countryside, whether horse riding among the pincushion hills of Viñales or diving the coral reefs of Maria la Gorda.
Driving on the autopista is in itself an experience - eight, virtually traffic-free lanes with only the occasional plodding horse, shimmying Chevvy or pothole for company. Santa Clara, Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba are all part of a romantic stroll through Cuba's history of revolution, music and a people who are somehow still living in the 1950s.
But Cuba is changing fast. The omnipotent Fidel Castro - if, in fact, still alive - is leader only in name, and his brother Raoul is slowly making overtures to America. If Havana is only 90 miles from the Florida Keys, ideology-wise the country is light years from the US.
But it is a gap that will be bridged as fast as you can say 'McDonald's' when the ailing Castro passes away.
And walking around this 1930s-designed shrine to art deco is magical - if not as a guest, at least as a witness to the some of the best mojitos to be had.
But the real, throbbing heart of Havana is a few kilometres down the Malecon seafront promenade in the old town - Habana Vieja. This is where it's all happening, where curvaceous women dance the salsa with elderly men on street corners, where your guide is likely to be a gynaecologist (guides earn more), and where crumbling buildings compete on the charm scale with the renovated Spanish colonial squares of this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
If the hotels in Habana Vieja are not quite in the style of the Naçional, there is surely some caché in having a room in the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where Ernest Hemingway is said to have written some chapters of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Renting a car is a relatively painless affair and certainly the best way to explore the countryside, whether horse riding among the pincushion hills of Viñales or diving the coral reefs of Maria la Gorda.
Driving on the autopista is in itself an experience - eight, virtually traffic-free lanes with only the occasional plodding horse, shimmying Chevvy or pothole for company. Santa Clara, Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba are all part of a romantic stroll through Cuba's history of revolution, music and a people who are somehow still living in the 1950s.
But Cuba is changing fast. The omnipotent Fidel Castro - if, in fact, still alive - is leader only in name, and his brother Raoul is slowly making overtures to America. If Havana is only 90 miles from the Florida Keys, ideology-wise the country is light years from the US.
But it is a gap that will be bridged as fast as you can say 'McDonald's' when the ailing Castro passes away.
Here Is The Writer : Travelyarder
For two years Esther Spaarwater (ex-Financial News Journalist, ex-JPMorgan Asset Management marketer) and Amanda Couper (former Clifford Chance lawyer) gave up their respectable jobs to travel the world. Back in London they have given up on any attempt to exorcise the travel bug and have instead launched www.travelyard.co.uk, an itineraries website aimed at busy workers who want to spend their two-week annual leave in interesting destinations but don't have the time to figure out the where, what and how. Anyone interested in joining them on a two-week, 4WD camping holiday in Namibia in September can contact them at info@travelyard.co.uk or find out more by clicking their Namibia page.
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