Cuba is a vibrant, socially thriving country with a colourful past, and a present and future still far from black and white. Despite the restrictive controls on their lives, the Cubans have learnt to approach the ordinary day to day with a very unique mixture of dancing, cocktails, street football, cigars and doorstep socializing. This heady combination bubbles over into the cracked and worn streets, surrounded by the intoxicating atmosphere of sun, sea, heat, live music and cigar smoke.

It’s a country where you have to go with the flow; resisting its charm and moving against the flow simply leaves you exhausted and isolated in a land which prides itself on companionship and loud social gatherings fuelled by live music, rum and rich singing.

Letting yourself get swept away by the locals, pulled down side streets and into the labyrinth of run down houses to buy black market cigars. Bursting in on a family sitting down to lunch and being offered a place at the table; arms open wide to complete strangers. Young boys yelling at a grainy picture of a western football match on a TV from the 1980s. The youngest boy only permitted to watch the game through his role as aerial holder, moving in a constant left and right motion before settling in a position resembling an agitated monkey. He watches morosely as his older bothers dig out their collections of Montecristos and Cohibas for our perusal.

Then stumbling back from the darkness into the sunshine and being immediately accosted by a waiting gentleman dressed like a rainbow; a look he tops off with a smart panama which he bows in greeting. He leads us into a crumbling building which must once have been beautiful, sweeping up grand but faded staircases into a bar surrounding a huge concert hall. A gathering place every Saturday night for locals. Local music, rum and dancing, an environment we were happily submersed in 5 hours later, watching wizened old men play cards, laughing gap-toothed smiles and puffing away on benches. The women on the dance floor stretched into never ending conga lines around the room.

Despite decades of routine, and a ground hog existence of 1960s Cadillacs and ration books, Cuba is changing as the political relationship with the US tries to find middle ground. How things will change remains to be seen. Cuba is a land of dreams; of an isolated people, perceived by the west as having little access to travel or progression following Fidel Castro’s revolution in the 1950s and the tight US sanctions imposed ever since. Hopefully that will change, opening Cuba up to new dreams and ideas, where people can see opportunity with fresh eyes, trade and travel routes are opened and Cuba moves into a new world.