Approaching Havana

The approach to the city was strangely dead. It was as if I was in a taxi in some post-apocalyptic movie. There was hardly anyone to be seen for the first 10 minutes. The highway was quite nice, separated in the middle, lush verdant foliage on both sides recalling Singapore or India or any other tropical place being beaten to merciless death by an afternoon sun at its zenith. Occasionally we'd pass people on the side of the road trying to hitch rides.

I was to realize later that this was common and unfortunately just how people got around, given the crumbling infrastructure – or as Thompson and Thomson would put it, the lack of infrastructure, to be more precise. There were also large groups of people standing, sitting, biding time at bus stops.

We were practically inside central Havana, nearabouts the Capitolio – Cuba's grander version of the US Capitol – that I saw people up and about, like a real city. We reached my destination – a casa particular,  literally translated "personal house or home". Maria greeted me warmly and within a minute I was out on her very large terrace looking at the spending view in front of me: the shimmering, blue sea and El Malecon to my left.

Maria, an Afro-Cubana aging gracefully, received me with a wide smile and kisses on both cheeks. No matter how snide and snippy I sound about the sometimes-exasperating hustling in Cuba, people are just friendly. Must be all that sugar they grew, and still grow.