Cuba is dancing to its own beat, in its own time, Sue Wootton writes.
For visitors to Cuba, it's hard to shake the impression that a glass bubble descended over the island 50 years ago, semi-preserving everything. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro stare from the walls; revolutionary slogans are daubed on buildings.
The grandchildren of the revolution drive their grandparents' high-fendered Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs. Many of them live in Havana's mansions (once occupied by a select few of their grandparents).
It's not that time has stopped. If that were the case, the mansions would look magnificent, and the cars brand-new. But neither has time moved forward, at least not as we understand it.
In Cuba, time has nibbled at things. Everything is run-down, patched-up, make-do-and-mend.
In colourful, energetic juxtaposition to this are the Cuban people - they look magnificent, they look brand-new. Someone's playing a saxophone down that alley. There's rum and cigars, rumba, jazz and salsa.
There are grinning children with the whitest teeth you ever saw (there are elderly cigar smokers with the worst teeth you ever saw). There's big-game fishing, white-sand beaches, blue skies, beach umbrellas and babes in bikinis.
There's baseball in streets and corner lots and parks.
The Cuban pulse carries the vibrant beat of many cultures: African, Spanish, Indian. There is nothing nibbled-away about this pulse - it lives.
Downtown Havana is where most foreigners begin to explore Cuba. The city is rich in architectural interest. The avenues and plazas are wide and gracious.
Buildings are majestic, boasting stone cupolas, stained-glass windows, brightly coloured ceramic tiles, bronze-winged angels and marbled Doric columns. Eighteenth-century Jesuit simplicity sits alongside gold-flaked Art Deco, flamboyant colonial baroque and clean-lined Modernism.
A fun way to orientate yourself is to hire a coco-taxi for an hour. These bright-yellow three-wheeled egg-shaped taxis can transport two or three people.
The driver will whizz you past the 1926 limestone and granite Capitolio National (taller and grander than the US Capitol building), the leafy Parque Central and the European-style Prado boulevard, and point out attractions such as the Museo de la Revolucion (previously the Presidential Palace) and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.
An excellent perch from which to absorb Havana's zeitgeist is the sea wall of the Malecon, the 8km seaside boulevard where Havana-ites go to catch fish, meet friends, play music, philosophise, kiss their lovers or recite poetry.
It's easy to imagine Florida beckoning, invisibly, from just beyond the horizon (but tougher to contemplate the reality of getting there, on, say, a raft, at night).
The sea booms in here, crashing over the sea wall to drench unsuspecting pedestrians. Not even the 18th-century fort at the far end of the Malecon can hold back this constant bombardment by salt.
The elegant buildings that line the boulevard are slowly rotting, but sunset in particular lights them up, lending them the luminosity of beautiful oil paintings.
While much of tourist-oriented Old Havana has been restored, most buildings in Havana are decrepit, as you notice as soon as you wander off the tourist grid.
Locals walk along the middle of the roads, avoiding the cracked footpaths, but not for fear of a sprained ankle. On the footpath, there's a real risk of being hit by falling masonry from peeling balconies and facades.
But what beautiful balconies! What elaborate facades!
Grandly proportioned and decorated, the interiors of these buildings are like rabbit warrens.
Half a century ago, they were requisitioned by the State and carved into apartments to accommodate families who flocked to the city after the revolution. Since it has only very recently become possible to sell the apartment that was allocated, it is usual for several generations to share the space.
Cuba operates a ''double economy'', sometimes described (by tourists) as ''tourist apartheid''. Cubans pay for products and services with Cuban pesos; tourists must pay in the much more valuable CUC, or convertible currency.
The average Cuban wage amounts to 10-25 ''convertibles'' a month but, in Havana, families can let a room for 30 ''convertibles'' a night.
Thus, despite having to comply with rigid, petty, time-consuming and costly bureaucracy, Cubans are keen to earn ''convertibles'' from foreigners, often by renting rooms or by driving state-regulated taxis.
Happily for foreigners, this means it is possible to stay in a Cuban family home, in a bed and breakfast arrangement called a casa particulara.
Although interaction between host and guest is heavily regulated - casual conversation is discouraged by the authorities - this is an excellent way for visitors to begin to understand the reality of Cuban life.
Hosts must provide a bedroom and bathroom separate from family use. Especially in hard-up Havana, it can be obvious that family members have temporarily vacated these areas to accommodate guests. These bare rooms are always scrupulously clean.
The walls, covered long ago with state-issued paint in sky blue, pink or turquoise, are peeling; the electrical system visible as a tangle of black cords and loose Bakelite fittings. Often, sheets are threadbare, bed frames ancient, and mattresses sagging.
In the bathroom, a narrow rivulet of hot water runs fitfully from 50-year-old shower fittings. The sliver of soap is it. The quarter-roll of rough toilet paper is also it.
And, once used, your tiny piece of toilet paper can't be flushed, as Cuban plumbing is not designed to take paper. Instead, it is placed in the adjacent waste basket for disposal in the rubbish.
The cost of staying in a casa particulara includes breakfast and, by negotiation and for an extra fee, an evening meal. The food is generally plain: eggs, bread, coffee and juice for breakfast, and rice, fish, chicken or lobster with salad for the evening meal. (This sounds more sumptuous than what actually arrives on the plate.)
Better meals are sometimes available in restaurants, but not always. If your casa particulara host turns out to be a good cook, stick with that. Compared to the food rations your host family is entitled to, guests eat extremely well.
Hanging on the walls of many Cuban houses is at least one studio portrait of an absent son or daughter. These impeccably groomed, bright-eyed and well-qualified youngsters are in Florida or the Canary Islands, working, often illegally, in service jobs such as waitressing and housemaiding.
There are very few shops in the residential streets of Havana, and all have near-empty shelves. As a foreigner, you may be approached for toiletries or pharmaceuticals. Due to the US embargo, even simple painkillers are hard to get.
A surgeon whose house we stayed in described the stress of working without an adequate supply of sutures or antibiotics. Unsurprisingly, public health campaigns are heavily promoted.
There might not be much soap, but everyone understands the importance of washing one's hands with it. Cleanliness is not so much a virtue as a necessity. Prevention is much, much cheaper than cure.
The chronically deferred maintenance, the shortages of basic commodities, the food rationing, the family absences - these are simple facts of life in Cuba.
You might think the people would be perpetually grey and downcast. Instead, there is cheerfulness and laughter. A powerful sense of community and common purpose infuses the culture.
There is much coming and going between houses, with neighbours sharing food, mechanical skills and information. Radio bemba - radio of the lips - is how news of unexpected product availability or impending shortage gets around. Excited children attend after-school meetings in public plazas.
Older teenagers, often dressed in funny costumes, lead them in games and politically based communal singing. The children join in with gusto and brilliant smiles. In the evenings, while children whack baseballs in the streets, adults gather on stoops to chat.
Every neighbourhood has its tavern, usually a plain place with plastic tables and chairs, but filled with locals and jumping with jazz riffs and salsa beats. To dance, in Cuba, is as natural as breathing.
The glass bubble that descended on the island in 1959 is starting to lift as the Government begins to re-form the socialist agenda. When it lifts enough - or shatters - Time will rush in to fill a 50-year vacuum. Maybe the Oldsmobiles and the decrepit mansions will be swept aside in a rush to modernise.
Meanwhile, visiting Cuba is more than a geography trip; it's a kind of time travel, a journey to yesterday, to a place where the news still travels slowly but music is everywhere. Go now.
• Sue Wootton is a Dunedin writer.
