The city where time stands still

Revolutionary rev-up

From Will Venn

by Will Venn - 14/05/2007

Back to the Future should be put on the in-flight movie system of all planes heading into Cuba.

A glance through the window on our descent shows the Caribbean at its most charismatic: Bahamian atolls fade away into a beautiful, azure-coloured ocean. But from then on in, it's the 1950s all the way.

The 30-minute drive from the airport to our hotel – the Saratoga in La Habana Vieja – plunges me, Marty McFly-style, into a world from a past era. It's one in which Chevrolets and horses and carts head down streets where fast-food restaurants and high-street chain stores are conspicuous by their total absence. Instead of billboards advertising brand names, there are vast paintings of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and slogans daubed on walls celebrating the island's revolution, incredibly now almost 50 years ago.

Not even the luxurious bubble of a five-star hotel can fully hide the tight grip Communism still holds over Cuba. On one of the few TV channels allowed to broadcast (satellite dishes are banned), a seemingly endless political broadcast is aired. A knock on the door from a chambermaid furtively offering me a handful of euros in exchange for pesos or dollars suggests a less-than-thriving currency exchange system.

But, ironically, whatever attempts the state makes to play down the poverty and play up Cuba's beach-fringed Caribbean attractions in a bid to cultivate tourism, its unique appeal really lies in it being grounded in a past era.

The Chevies cruising around the faded Spanish architecture of the backstreets, and endless makeshift bands sparking up in bars where the mojitos flow readily, are entrancing. The fun is in discovering it yourself and venturing to places that aren't totally sugar-coated or state-endorsed.

For instance, on our first night we ate at El Floridita, a tourist trap of a bar/restaurant whose luxury interior and statue in the corner of one-time regular Ernest Hemingway did little to sweeten the rubberised shrimp, canned vegetables and ketchup masquerading as seafood sauce in this pricey place. The one saving grace was the daiquirís served here, for which El Floridita is rightly renowned.

Far better, though, were our other eating venues, known as Paladares. These are basically tiny restaurants run in big living rooms, where family members have opened their homes to cook for a small handful of visitors. Our meals at La Guarida in Centro Habana and La Esperanza further out towards coastal Miramar were triumphs of home cooking style in cool, cult surroundings.

Dishes, usually offered from just a spoken menu, included "Rabbit in Lasagne", "1950's-style chicken", plantain and pork. These tiny places have vast character and are a great introduction to Cuban food and genuine hospitality.

La Guarida in particular is tucked away inside a mansion Miss Haversham would feel at home in, decaying, untouched by the hands of modern design – not dissimilar from the majority of pastel-coloured colonial buildings lining the unlit streets of the central district. In fact, there is no clue from the outside that inside, up two flights of stairs and past a few teenage jinteros (hustlers) is one of Cuba's finest eateries. Just ask Steven Spielberg or Jack Nicholson, who had the good sense to escape their five-star cocoons to eat there (and get photographed on the way in).

In a similar way Cuba's famous La Tropicana, whilst a riot of choreographed colour and amazing dance routines (viewed with the obligatory bottle of Havana club rum plonked on the table) is touristy fun, doesn't quite kick it as much as the back-street bands found around Plaza de la Catedral and smaller venues such as Casa de la Música, where Cubans kick off their heels with total abandon at any opportunity.

The sound of rumba is threaded through Cuba as much as the images of Castro and Che Guevara. It's everywhere – even security at the airport told me, literally, to boogie on down. But practically no amount of rum or shots of Cuba Libres gave our group the courage to grace the dance floor when the salsa displayed by everyone in local clubs is astoundingly high. In an age of MTV and MP3s, Cubans keep the music alive in fantastic, old-school ways. It must be in the blood stream.

Such high spirits seem to abound across the city. The cigar-wielding woman of the old town, the market traders, the Coco taxi drivers and street hustlers all come across with a friendly banter (and Ali G impersonations, if you say you are from England), even if at times it is stage-managed to negotiate a few pesos from you as they attempt to lead you to a good bar, where they'll stick with you and expect you to buy them mojitos. But with a strong police presence and low crime rate, it's a safe city to get by.

The carefree, pioneering spirit does much to mask the reality of living and working conditions. A visit to the Partagas tobacco factory proved both fascinating and depressing; the thrill of seeing Montecristo and Cociba cigars hand-rolled from scratch is sullied by the humid and slightly squalid conditions of the workplace and the look of collective monotony across a workforce whose monthly income is individually less than the price of a small box of the same cigars in the UK. Small wonder that we are banned from taking photographs inside the building.

For political insight it's worth heading up to the Plaza de la Revolución or the Museo de la Revolución in the old town. The plaza has a huge marble tower, the top of which has a viewing area to see out across the city. On the other side of the square is a vast, steel-constructed image of Ernesto Che Guevara looking more impressive adorning the side of the ministry of the interior rather than on some student's bedroom wall.

To learn more about Che, head down to the revolution museum. It's a fascinating place to get the Communist slant of such pivotal historical events as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis and Castro's against-the-odds seizure of power.

With relics as strange as the pairs of sunglasses and combat trousers worn by the revolutionaries in the 1950s and 1960s on display, outside the main building are the tanks and war planes used in the fighting. Bullet-ridden vehicles standing firm among the swaying palm trees and 80F heat of the Caribbean made me appreciate just how different Cuba is from its neighbouring islands. Miami, less than 100 miles away, may as well be on the other side of the planet.

With power temporarily resting in the hands of Fidel Castro's brother, Raúl, now is still a golden time to see Cuba before it catches up with the 21st century. Castro's illness in 2006 was a reminder that this cult character is also human and that a new and different future could be just teetering over Havana's horizon.

No one knows – or seems willing to discuss what that future may hold. Ali G may have got in under the cultural radar, but with so little else of the west infiltrating here, Havana remains, for now, a fascinating, solitary city to experience.