“Why would you go to a crusty, third world communist country like Cuba for your honeymoon?" my friends asked me. "Where’s the romance in that?”

Driving from Havana airport to our hotel in a battered Russian sedan, clinging on to the coat hanger-for-a-door handle, I was tempted to agree with them. The buildings on the city outskirts were ugly examples of Russian Cold War high-rises. The filthy cab stank of fuel. We knew our driver was ripping us off. Our hotel, located in a quarter crawling with pimps and prostitutes, had no hot water and an air-conditioner that squealed like a Russian tank. To top it off, our guide had gone AWOL.

Looking for somewhere to dine, we wandered through Vedado, Havana’s modern political and cultural centre. The main hotels, restaurants, shops, theatres and ministries are located here, along with a wealth of historic gardens and Colonial houses. Despite this, all we could find to eat was a ham and cheese sandwich. I had been warned about Cuban food. In the words of my artist friend Geoff: “If you’re going to Cuba for the food, you’ll love the music.”

I was determined to prove him wrong.

Later that evening we were pursued by George and his “wife” Delores, who asked for the time and then followed us around insisting that we take them to a bar. Geoff had warned me about this also. Apparently, you could wind up buying people drinks all night. When I told them we weren’t really interested they accused me of being racist. My husband thought I was being rude but he wasn’t aware of the scam. I was furious. We went back to the crappy hotel and fell exhausted into our single beds. A great start to the honeymoon.

The next morning we met Roger, our easy going, hip, young guide from Camagüey, central Cuba. Instantly our luck changed. With his raver T-shirt, ponytail and constant smile, (he had ridiculously white teeth), we became instant friends. That night he took us to a restaurant in a beautiful renovated Colonial house which served excellent mojitos and a delicious meal of chicken, beans, vegetables and rice, washed down with the local very good, but very potent, Bucanero beer.

Walking the streets you realise Havana is a city frozen in time. A spiteful trade and travel embargo was imposed on Cuba and Fidel Castro by the US during the Kennedy years in the 1960s when the Bay of Pigs invasion attempt and the Cuban missile crisis saw the world on the brink of nuclear war. The embargo and travel bans were reinforced in the Johnson era and beyond. In Habana Vieja, the historic heart of Havana, I spy a 1955 green Buick with fins and a 1956 red shining Pontiac. While the embargo might have prohibited the exportation of cars to Cuba, some industrious mechanics have recycled parts from auto graveyards, even making some parts by hand.

Right in America’s face only 90 miles away, Cuba has been the victim and witness of its neighbour’s worst behaviour. When Ché and Castro came riding triumphantly into Havana, Batista and the mafia had already grabbed the till and bolted, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down. They were followed by any Cuban who was rich or had a marketable profession. In 1961 Cuba was left with just a few doctors who then went on to develop one of the finest health services in the world. From just a few teachers a school system was created that delivered universal literacy and world leading artists, dancers, boxers and musicians. But many refugees who fled to Florida didn’t leave because they were anti-communist; they weren’t people fleeing for freedom, but opportunists who benefited from thuggish corruption.

I came to regard Havana as a stunning and dynamic city, in line with Paris and New York. The beautiful architecture of this first New World city is crumbling, its picaresque paint peeling only adds to its charm. But what makes it even more unique is that it’s a city where advertising doesn’t pervade every sense of your body, where the latest SUV isn’t booming obnoxious music, where people don’t consume until they are obese. It’s a place where people aren’t perpetually intimidated and scorned by capitalism.

A couple of days later we leave for mystic Baracoa, the oldest city in Cuba, which lies at the far eastern tip of the island. I try to ignore the plane’s very flat, worn looking tyres and not think about the ramifications of an embargo on plane parts. I imagine technicians merrily fixing the fuselage with a coat hanger and string. We are told we can sit anywhere, we don’t need to buckle up and there is no safety demonstration. The smiling flight attendant offers us some lollies. I don’t recall hearing of any crashes in Cuba but wonder if Uncle Fidel would tell us anyway.

Founded in 1512, things are pretty laid back in Baracoa and the abundance of palm trees along the coast give it a South Pacific feel. There were many unforgettable moments here including swimming in the warm, salty Caribbean, eating lobster drenched in chilli and lime and dancing an awkward samba with a tall, angel-faced Afro-Cuban boy in a local nightclub. The proprietor, on learning we were on our honeymoon, presented my husband with a bunch of cigars. Another one of my fondest memories was a riverside barbeque where my husband entertained the locals, playing Beatles songs on a borrowed guitar.

Despite their hardship, Cubans are collectively some of the happiest, attractive and accommodating people I have ever met. They adore having their photo taken and are happy to indulge you in black market goods, such as Montecristo cigars, straight from the factory.

Leaving on a bus for Santiago de Cuba, the most African, musical and passionate city in Cuba, my husband struck up a friendship with the driver Ramon. The language was no barrier for this pair – their rapport largely based on exchanging obscenities such as “Que pinga la pasa?” (What the fuck is happening?” Something we often wondered during our trip).

In Santiago de Cuba we became regulars at the deco classic Casa Hotel Granda, built in the city square in 1920 and described by Graham Green in Our Man in Havana as a hotel frequented by spies. I looked hard for secret police and spies but was disappointed. Nevertheless, the view of the Cathedral and the town hall balcony where Castro made his first victory speech to the Cuban people on 1 January 1959 more than sufficed.

Fifty years later in April 2009, in line with President Barack Obama’s campaign promises to reach out to America’s foes, the White House announced Cuban-American families will be free to travel to Cuba and send money to relatives under the first major relaxation of US policy towards the island since The Cold War. With this announcement, I worry that these Cuban-Americans and their Yankee children will head back to Cuba with their Yankee dollars and buy out this beautiful, run down paradise and turn it into Little Miami.

As for my Cuban honeymoon?

My friends didn’t know that this beautiful country with its hot Latin spirit, filmic fading elegance and passionate revolutionary soul is the perfect place for a honeymoon. They didn’t know that every city in Cuba has a thriving music scene that starts in the middle of the day and salsas on to the wee hours of the morning, most days of the week. That it’s a place where hanging out on street corner with a nip of rum in one hand and a long Montecristo cigar in the other is not a social anomaly, but a daily ritual where locals catch up.

I sure set them straight. And Geoff? You were so wrong about the food.
When in Cuba…

EAT – Paladars, home run restaurants constitute the best places to eat. La Bodeguita del Medio Havana, the legendary haunt of Hemingway and Cuban intellectuals, artists and politicians, offers excellent Creole dishes. Walls are plastered with graffiti and photographs of famous patrons like Nat King Cole, Pablo Neruda and Sean Penn.

DRINK – The 1930s Salon Bar at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba where Ava Gardner and Winston Churchill used to drink and Naomi Campbell stays when in town. The air is heady with cigars and salsa beats. Where the famed Buena Vista Social Club meet.

MUSIC – The music scene is hot, hot, hot. Clubs appear and disappear like shots of rum. Experience lively and fast-paced jazz, rumba, salsa, from a mix of horn, percussion and string instruments at Casa de Musica in Havana or modern music at Disco Ayala, a club set within a hillside cave in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Trinidad.

VISIT – The lovely sea and sand resorts in the Archipélago de Los Canarreos by boat, and be amused by drunken, budgie smuggling wearing Russian men dancing to the Crazy Frog.

SEE – The world leading Cuban National Ballet, based at the Great Theatre of Havana and the Galeria Habana, one of Havana’s oldest and best-established galleries, specialising in contemporary Cuban art.