Day 3 – Havana

Today I ventured into the newer part of the city and tried to get my head around Cuba's unique currency system. This is how it works;

For almost all transactions a tourist would need to make (accommodation, travel) they will be charged in Cuban Convertible Pesos also known as CUCs or just plain Pesos, however, for certain things they may also find themselves being charged in an alternative currency used only by the locals known as Cuban Pesos also known as MNs or just Pesos.

1CUC (or Peso) = 70p or,

1MN (or Peso) = 3p.

To make it simple, 70p = 1 Peso = 24 Pesos. Got it?

Some prices are displayed in CUC and some in MN but it is rarely specified which. In short, the potential for being ripped off in this country is enormous and only Stephen Hawking would be able to do the maths required to convert prices from CUCs/MNs/Peso to Sterling. He would have a bugger of a time with all the holes in the pavement though.

I am not sure if it is that Cubans like to queue or that the staff are geriatric-like in their speed of service or a combination of both but just about every shop or restaurant seems to have a line of people outside it most hours of the day, the situation is exasperated by the security guard that stands outside every premises and often only let one person into the building at a time.

Day 2 – Havana

Hola! Hola! Hola!

The locals cried as I aimlessly wandered along the seafront taking photos of classic cars and run-down bars. I had read many times in the months leading up to my trip that the Cubans were a friendly group of people and so they were proving. As it turns out my grasp of Spanish is not as good as I thought and what I perceived to be 'Hola' was in actual fact 'Hole'. A simple error I failed to grasp until I had fallen into the aforementioned hole, which dot the pavements of the Havana waterfront like puddles of sick on a Saturday night in Southend.

Thus my first morning in Cuba was spent in hospital getting my broken ankle put into plaster. Not really. I only wrote the broken ankle bit so that everyone who laughed at the first paragraph (I know who you are) would feel guilty. For those of you who continued laughing (I know who you are too) a pox on your first born.

I spent the rest of the day walking (O.K. hobbling) around Havana Vieja which is the spanish colonial part of the city. In the evening over a delicious lobster and several Mojito's (who's laughing now eh?). I watched the Cuban girls in action and was impressed how easily they were able to part a fool from his money. One particular professional managed to tap into a German punter after dragging him from his stool with the clearly inaccurate promise 'Senor you are such a good dancer' – he wasn't, but was fished in and proceeded to supply her beer, cigarettes and cigars for the next two hours. The highlight was when a young but incredibly ugly fellow hooker approached the bar and I overheard 'You need to buy my mother a cigar'.

Day 1 – London to Havana

I didn't have a problem with the one hour delay or the fact that when I lowered my tray on the plane it fell into three pieces, but the realisation that of the 12 movies being shown only two were not utter crap and that I may have to endure a Jason Statham film just to get through the flight had me seriously contemplating opening the exit door at 35,00ft.

Having watched Monsters (very good) and The Others Guys (very funny), a documentary on the American education system (yes really) and The Expendables (Jason Statham and Sylvester Stallone, please note the title) I was more than ready for the flight to end – I am sure someone told me that Virgin Atlantic was a decent airline? It is not.

After 10 hours I was mercifully reeled into the third-world, poverty-stricken capital of Cuba. We passed through security in record time – the record being the longest, slowest-moving queue on the planet, beating the record previously held by Simon Cowell when he offered music fans the opportunity to beat him with a rubber truncheon.

That hurdle passed we moved onto baggage reclaim where I expected to have to battle through the cobwebs that had by now engulfed all luggage from flight VS065. I need not have worried, as luck would have it my bag didn't arrive and as I walked to the lost luggage counter wondering how I could get to Richard Branson's island to choke him on his own beard – I found my bag. It seems that one of the pensioners from my flight (there were many on their way to all inclusive resorts – all you can eat, all you can drink, all the staff you can abuse) had mistaken my backpack for his suitcase, had pulled it from the conveyor belt, realised his error and then simply kicked it back under the belt. Cheers for that.

Three hours after landing (that's communism for you) we had finally got out of the airport and were in a taxi into town. We arrived into Havana and decided a beer and some food was needed before bed as it was 4.30am. Imagine my unbridled joy as the moment I sat down two fellas with guitars and bongo drums sat on the opposite side of my table and began to serenade Ciara and I.

Cuba is not quite as cheap as I imagined, the bill for our first meal came in at just over £55, however that did cover four beers, two pizzas, damage to an acoustic guitar and the surgical removal of a bongo from a serenader's derrière.