Havana – a party girl of a city

I have always longed to get on a plane and command, ‘Take me to Cuba!’ Well, the other week I did just that. Sadly, it fell a little flat, the stewardess’s wintry smile telling me that she got a lot of that on the Gatwick-Havana flight. Still, it kept me chuckling for the next eight and a half hours between movies, meals and snoozes in Virgin Upper Class.

Havana was humid and sticky and it was as stifling inside my elderly rust-bucket of a taxi as it was outside.

‘Air-con on half?’ grinned the driver, winding down his window halfway, ‘or on full?’, winding it down as far as it would go. We agreed on full and set off, swerving between potholes, stray dogs and broken-down cars. I wouldn’t have worried quite so much about the stench of petrol if the driver hadn’t been smoking such an enormous cigar, the ash of which exploded in a shower of sparks each time we hit a bump.