In Cespedes Square, Santiago de Cuba, there was a goat cart. It was overloaded with children, for a ride cost only a few centavos, and under the alamo trees the afternoon was cool and the stone benches were crowded with people taking their ease, watching the cart and listening to a brass band.

At the national anthem everyone stood to attention, including the children, and the goat took a rest, legs trembling, head shaking; dead on its feet. Passers by smiled at me and came to talk, one after the other, lots of them.

Around the square the girls strutted their stuff, walking like dancers, and looking straight into me, happy, sometimes winking and smiling secretly: ``Hey amigo, where you from?'' Even their grannies had ancient stuff to strut; bright shirts and see-through white trousers or short skirts.

There was no traffic because there was no oil; Cuba only receives a third of its needs. Apart from the music there was no sound but the sound of footsteps and voices, and the near-silent swoop of Chinese bicycles. Beyond the trees the buildings were elegant: a white and yellow bank, Hernando Cortez's town house, the Cathedral and the City Hall where Fidel made a speech, way back in the beginning.

In the narrow street beyond the square were fine, dilapidated houses, old-world charm in their wooden and wrought-iron balconies. The houses crumbled in on themselves, but their doors and windows were open, giving glimpses of bare rooms a bed, a table and a chair, and from the darkness inside came the shouts of women ordering their households.

The town was full of life, but not crowded. Men pushed small wooden platforms with ballbearings for wheels and each platform carried an oil barrel full of water, water that had to be lugged into each apartment. Looking up I saw the long lines of balconies, thickly inhabited, friend calling to friend and women talking across the street, quietly. Up there was a different stratum of life, like the high terrace of a rain forest.

A girl in curlers called down to me, pretended to be shy, but posed for the camera anyway. Almost immediately her neighbour appeared at a barred window, one of those long narrow windows from old Spain. She smiled and held herself ready, striking a pose. Soon most of the quarter was out, writing their addresses on scraps of paper, because they all read and write now ``Batista's barracks have been turned into schools,'' they said.

That evening, when the lampless streets were dark, away from the square and along the Calle Heredia, I heard more music. There are still troubadours in Cuba, men and women who will sing about anything, and their audiences love and revere them. I found a crowd of maybe 200 grouped around a seven-piece band outside the Casa de Trova, the House of the Troubadours: guitars, maracas, claves, bongos and a double bass. Rows of benches were set across the road and those sitting at the front made a space and beckoned me to join them.

Everyone was swaying or dancing: grandmas and grandads, lovers and married couples. One old man, well into his 80s, wearing snappy cream trousers and winkle-pickers, danced a rumba with a woman at least as old as he was. Under his panama his face was wet with sweat, blank, gone with the music. His partner leant back in his arms and looked at the sky, her feet floating with his over the rough Tarmac. By the doorway of the Casa de Trova ancient troubadours moved to the beat and closed their eyes, dreaming old songs. Never mind the rationing, never mind the blocade, at least we can sing.

DOWN the centre of the island runs the Autopista, four lanes in each direction, empty of traffic most of the time, like an abandoned aerodrome, the emptiness inducing what vehicles there are to be careless and foolhardy. A truck and trailer, loaded with bananas, crossed the central reservation. Three cyclists dawdled in my fast lane, riding towards me, weaving patterns on the road as they talked and gesticulated; and down the yellow grass in the middle of the highway rode a vaquero on a skinny Rocinante of a horse, the brim of his straw sombrero curled upwards in defiance, while his left hand rested halfway along his thigh and his elbow stood cocked at right angles to his body. Here was a man who had seen every western ever made. It was a fine sight, but the saddle was wooden, the blanket worn thin and the stirrups were old lumps of broad iron that swung on frayed bits of rope.

In Cuba hitch-hiking has been nationalised. At every intersection in every village and town, and at every bus stop in every city, huge crowds wait with endless patience for transport. Usually, a man in yellow overalls El Amarillo waits with them, empowered by the state to stop government cars and trucks to make sure they take as many passengers as they can. When a truck halts the crowd surges forward and climbs in, up the high steep sides; children passed hand to hand, grandparents pushed from behind and girls in tight skirts scrambling up as best they might. My route to the capital was lined with these people, marooned, and looking for rescue.

IN HAVANA they love Hemingway; he brings in the tourists and is made much of. Just behind the Palacio de los Capitanos Generales on the Plaza de Armas, is the Ambos Mundos Hotel where Ernest wrote For Whom The Bell Tolls.