Revolutionary Cuba
Julia Buckley
| 1 Sep 2009
1st January 2009 marked the 50th anniversary since the Cuban Revolution. Julia Buckley, travel writer for The London Paper, finds its legacy all over the country.
Havana’s Ramshackle Glamour
Gavin McOwan
| 1 Mar 2008
Travel writer for The Guardian, Gavin McOwan finds contemporary Havana’s art, music and dance as hot as ever. Close your eyes, think of Cuba and what do you see? Probably shiny 1950s Cadillacs, salsa-ing mulattas, big cigars, mojitos and the crumbling streets of Old Havana.
Havana's Heroes
Sarah Shuckburgh
| 1 Mar 2007
I sit on a bench in a tiny park, and the colour, music and exuberance of old Havana engulf me. An intoxicating blend of Spanish guitars and African drumbeats drifts from a nearby bar, where an elderly couple is performing an afternoon salsa. Workmen repairing a stone fountain add strange syncopated rhythms with their chisels. In the shade of a tree, an old man chats to his caged birds, a smouldering cigar dangling from his lips...
Cuban Revolutions
Steve Thomas
| 10 Oct 2004
Mornings after the nights before seem to be a major part of every day life in Cuba, and well - when in Rome and all that - a long night of rum and salsa in Santiago de Cuba’s Casa de la Trova (music and dance house) had kicked off our two-week bike trip around Cuba in fine Cuban style...
Up close and Cuban
John Gimlette
| 1 Dec 2003
John Gimlette explores the Real Cuba on JLA’s "Parakeet" escorted group tour from Havana to Baracoa - "On our fourth day in Havana, our carriage ran over a dog, we ate cheese sandwiches at every meal and sluiced away four of the best Daiquiris in the world at $6 a jolt..."
Running Cuba
Rosie Swale Pope
| 21 Jun 2002
I can’t think of a better resolution or "promesa", as the Cubans say, for those who love rare places - than to head for Cuba now before anything there changes. It is an island that is like a chameleon stuck within a fragile time capsule. I had always wanted to go to Cuba, so I decided to run across it from West to East (for Age Concern) by myself, a journey of over 750 miles as the pelican flies...
The Road Less Travelled
Alan Macdonald
| 21 Jan 1999
Eschewing resorts and revolution, Alan Macdonald discovers the intrinsic beauty of Cuba’s eastern most province - "The day was dawning as I climbed between sacks of vegetables and trussed poultry to join the locals aboard a Soviet truck belching its black exhaust fumes down the single street of Imias..."