Like all odd places, Cuba attracts odd people. When I first started visiting in 1993, straggle-bearded men boarded the Soviet-built Air Cubana jet from Stansted. Where to go first, comrade, they wondered? The tractor factory at Cienfuegos or the collective tobacco farm in Trinidad? Like the Cubana flights, the fellow-travellers have long departed. Still, it’s reassuring to find Cuba still attracts oddballs. Sitting next to me on the Virgin flight from Gatwick are two middle-aged Glaswegians. He’s a trainspotter, she’s a twitcher. They ignore the food, booze and movies and fill orange notebooks with lists of the diesel locomotives and warblers they want to tick off. They’re so engrossed, they don’t leave their seats for nine hours and scarcely speak. Calling all Scottish anoraks! You can sit next to me any time. You’re the best travelling companions.
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Mr and Mrs McGeek are way better than the old-timer with whom I share a cab from José Martí airport into town. ‘Petrol and pussy,’ he announces as our ancient Lada pulls away from the kerb. I beg your pardon? ‘Petrol and pussy,’ he repeats. ‘It’s the unique smell of Cuba, don’t you think?’ The world’s oldest profession is clearly alive and well in Havana. Thankfully, I’m after something newer, rarer and more valuable than sex. Money.
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Cuba is bust and its leader, Raúl Castro, who has taken over from his ageing older brother, Fidel, is sacking a fifth of all state workers. To help them find new jobs, he’s encouraging Cubans to set up small businesses. A hundred different sectors have opened up, including some pretty big stuff — estate agency, cars, guest houses and food. Some of the rules governing who can be a businessman, where and how are potty. Cubans can, for instance, become furniture makers and restorers but not furniture sellers. ¿Qué? Nevertheless, everyone I speak to, from officials talking off the record to economists, agrees that this is the biggest change in Cuba since the revolution in 1959.
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Cubans seem pretty good entrepreneurs, with almost 371,000 legal businesses established, according to the latest government figures — and many more illegal ones. But then, they’ve had to be good entrepreneurs. You can’t survive without a little private enterprise, for which read stealing. I’m staying at the Hotel Santa Isabel in old Havana, the most elegant hotel in the town, where Gary Cooper used to party when Havana fizzed with American ring-a-ding. One morning, my waiter tells me that there is no bread. Or yogurt. Or eggs. Or fruit. How can a fancy hotel on a tropical island run out of fruit, I ask? ‘Most of what comes in the front door goes straight out the back door,’ he explains. At least someone’s getting breakfast.
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Food and the state don’t mix. Thankfully, the state no longer has a monopoly. Cuba is one of the best places to go to eat. No, really. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Sarah Saunders. She runs a British company called Taste Adventures and has spent the past decade getting to know all the best chefs in Havana whom the government now allows to run paladares — home-based restaurants. She’s about to launch a culinary academy in Havana ‘before the big Americans corporations get in and ruin everything’. She takes me to Santi on the outskirts of town. It’s a shack, with no phone, doesn’t take bookings, and there’s only one thing on the menu. But it’s worth turning up and waiting because that thing is the best sashimi you’ll ever eat. Each morning Santi, the fisherman who owns the shack, catches tuna and Spanish mackerel. He kills and guts the fish just minutes before he serves it, with a little olive oil, coriander and soy. Eat it and weep, Nobu.
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It’s rude to go to Cuba and not smoke. But what cigar to buy without getting burned? Eddie Sahakian, who runs Davidoff in St James’s with his father Edward and is about to launch a spiffy new smoking lounge in Knightsbridge, is in town. He recommends a Cohiba Behike 56, which we smoke on the terrace of Le Chansonnier restaurant. It’s a big fat stick but has a subtle nutty flavour. But what to drink with it? Toby Brocklehurst, bon viveur around town and general Mr Fix-it, produces a bottle of 30-year-old Máximo Extra Añejo rum. The Museum of the Revolution records that Fidel gave up cigars and grog ‘after a truly revolutionary struggle’ but I think he would have approved.
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I leave Cuba longing to return. Yes, it is maddeningly bureaucratic. Mobile phones and the internet don’t work because Cuba depends on an ageing Russian satellite for communication. The street musicians only seem to know tunes from the Buena Vista Social Club. And, lest we forget, it’s a repressive state that locks up its many critics. But there’s nowhere on earth that combines history, charm, ruined grandeur, music, dancing, cocktails, cars, cigars and now food, with great weather. Change — capitalism — is coming. That will be good for Cubans but, I fear, bad for visitors who will no longer be able enjoy the only place left in the western hemisphere where there are no shops, no advertising, no brands and, best of all, no golf courses. Go now before the future shows up.