Art and culture...

We were bussed to an inner surburb (51st Avenue in Marianao?) to an improvised narrow rehearsal and theatre space where we were thrilled by a drum and dance outfit called Habana Compás which combine Spanish Flamenco with Cuban drum traditions in a noisy and highly energetic performance.

Drummers and dancers of Habana Compas. Notice the very well worn frame of the "wood and leather" drum/seat.

This troupe receives little or no government support but is successful thanks to their dramatic choreography and young, easy on the eye, performers. Their repertoire sounds revolutionary rather than classical or modern. Tradition has been eased - women are allowed to drum in this troupe! And the best drums are wooden and leather chairs - we were to find chairs of this style in many restaurants.

A spectacular and loud fusion of Cuban drums and Spanish flamenco!

Up a quiet lane in Havana Old Town, we visited a communal artists' workshop apparently called Taller Experimental d'Grafica. We think this place was well supported by the Cuban government, but they supplemented their subsidies via a pretty retail outlet. We were to learn that everyone in Cuba seeks to augment their meagre income in one way or another.

It was quiet in the well equipped Taller Experimental d'Grafica workshop. The one artist at work was camera shy.

Polly shopping in the workshop's outlet.

Another of our outings in Havana was to an outer suburb called San Francisco. Here is famous Pulitzer Prize winning American author Ernest Hemingway's hillside estate, known as "Finca Vigia" ("Lookout Farm") which is now preserved as a museum to Hemingway. The estate has views over Havana and the harbour.

View back to Havana from Finca Vigia.

Hemingway wintered in Havana from about 1939 to 1960 (i.e. through the revolution) with cats and at least one of his wives, during which time he authored "For Whom the Bell Tolls" but as far as Cubans are concerned, his most notable work is "The Old Man and the Sea" which he wrote in 1951 obviously drawing on his Havana experience. It is a story of an aging and unlucky Cuban fisherman and his struggle with a giant marlin.

Hemingway's house was very popular with visitors, the tower on the right.

Interior of Ernest Hemingway's house, restored by the Cubans without US help.

Hemingway's house became very dilapidated, but was restored by the Cuban government and opened as a museum in 2007. There is a single storied house and an adjacent tower. The furnishings and library in the estate are supposed to be genuine.

Hemingway's tower. The only room we could enter was the basement bathroom, for $0.25.

Is this the typewriter he used for "For Whom the Bell Tolls"?

We visitors were not allowed in the house or tower, but with windows and doors wide open, we did have excellent views of the interiors. A guard took good photos inside the tower with our camera, for a tip of course.

This tower observatory on the Hemingway estate overlooks city and harbour.

On the estate, there is also the Pilar, a 38ft fishing boat used by Hemingway for frequent long journeys between Florida and Cuba. Hemingway kept this boat at the nearby fishing village of Cojimar, just north of Havana, where we went after leaving Finca Vigia.

Taking a breather on the front steps of Hemingway's San Francisco estate. Those things around our necks are Lindblad's "whisperers", brilliant audio gadgets which allow us to wander around yet hear the guide at the same time.

There, we crowded into the popular La Terraza bar in Cojimar. Hemingway, a hopeless alcoholic apparently, preferred the corner table in this bar, and customers were not allowed to sit at it. As we strolled around the village and harbour (where there is a memorial to Hemingway, and an old Spanish fort), we were hounded by street urchins, more than anywhere else in Havana, who got in front of your camera and wanted money.

Corner table at the La Terraza bar favoured by Hemingway in Cojimar where he kept his boat.

Curacao tinted pina coladas for all in the "standing room only" La Terraza bar.

Fishermen at work at the quite rough entrance to Cojimar Harbour.

In our driving around Havana, we frequently used the Tunel de la Habana, a 750m tunnel under the entrance to Havana Port constructed in 1957. Our guide Lazaro told us that he was proud that his country had achieved such an engineering miracle, but he also admitted that this tunnel paled into insignificance when he saw the (much younger) "incredible underground motorways in Sydney" on a visit to Australia. Lazaro has been overseas quite a bit by the sound of it, but never to the USA.

Lazaro also informed us that the quite large Port Havana historically confined the expansion of the city to the south and west, thus the relatively light (and newer) development towards Cojimar.