"A Nation in Waiting" a Cuba Travel Page by SabrinaSummerville

A month before I left for Cuba I was talking to a guy at a party.
"Why Cuba?" he asked.
My immediate reply was that it was for the amazing old cars and the weather, but his question made me think.

Four weeks later I'm sitting in La Floridita in Havana, sipping a Daiquiri, and my sister calls from Ireland.
"There was a programme on TV last night about Cuba" she said. "Nothing to see there but old buildings and drive old cars."
I'm there thinking, happy days! Bring me another daiquiri.

I saw just a fraction of the country - Havana to Varadero. You must realise that Cuba is over 700 miles long! And there's SO much more to this fascinating country than cars and beaches. That TV programme was wrong, and my experience is but a taster of what's to offer here.

In truth and in fairness, I do have a fascination about old cars (in fact, about all cars) that tends towards obsession.

I spotted several copies of a book called "The American Dream Car in Cuba." I could have published that book myself, such was my passion for dodging into the middle of the road and photographing everything that moved. Transport varies from the classic 1950's Cadillac to the cutesy yellow coco taxi to the elderly grey open backed truck carrying a dozen men and women to work. The yellow school buses creak with age and the concerned traveller part of you fears for the safety of the children that ride in them each day. But people don't speed, drivers are careful, and police speed cops watch at intervals along the motorways. Roads are good - there's nothing substandard about them!

There's a Neil Young album titled "American Stars and Bars." I've always loved it, and while in Cuba I toyed around with the title to coin my own little phrase - "Cuban Cars and Cigars." If there's one thing that Cuba is infamous for, it's cigars. Look at all the older pics of Fidel Castro and you'll see him flashing a glorious Esplendido, considered by most to be the best cigar in the world. A case of these will set you back about 500 pesos (20 pesos apiece), but you won't buy them in Ireland for less than €60 each. Of course, like many other newly health conscious people, Castro doesn't smoke any more - but that does nothing to diminish the sale of cigars. I watched in patience one day as a Russian tourist in my hotel handed a sum in the region of six thousand pesos in cash to the shopkeeper together with his cigar order, scribbled on a scrap of paper. They closed the shop for two hours while they got it together. It is rumoured that Cuban cigars are exported to nearby Dominican Republic and repackaged for sale to the American market. I have no notion whether or not this is true, but you simply cannot beat the Cuban cigar and the American trade embargo makes it impossible to get them direct.