I enjoyed breakfast and the view from the top of the Hotel Sevilla where Graham Greene's 'Our Man in Havana' was set. The Museo de la Revolucion provides the Cuban side of the struggle against the Americans, which ended with victory in 1959. The way the story is told they were a motley bunch of nationalists, who only became communists after the revolution, because no one else would deal with them. Signs, indicating support for the revolution, still proudly hang in the streets almost 50 years later.

I headed across the island from Havana to the city of Trindad. Trinidad grew rich in the 19th century, not on tobacco, but on sugar. And sugar was only profitable because of the slaves.

Now it is a delicately coloured Spanish colonial town which enjoys World Heritage Site status. My bed and breakfast hostess there arranged an illegal taxi for us to go into the hills and introduced me to Pedro the dive guide who preferred to take casual tax-free clients at $US25 a dive rather than to work for a big resort.