A couple of blocks away, in the Calle Empedrado, is the Bodeguita del Medio, a bar and restaurant where the author drank regularly, and his signature is on the wall to prove it. The restaurant does a roaring trade and the tour buses roll up and the literary faithful troop in to drink what Ernest drank, the mojito rum, fresh mint, ice and lemon juice. Over every surface of the building graffiti crawls like a disease. It climbs up the walls, the tables and the chairs, over the upstairs terrace, and even defaces a portrait of Che Guevara.

Six miles east of Havana is the fishing village of Cojimar. A small, lazy-looking place, it has wide, dusty roads and small square houses. Nothing moved, except a few children and a skeleton of a dog that was eating the dry husk of an old orange. On the edge of the sea was an ancient fortress, solid, with three watch towers, built by the Spaniards to guard against the English, pirates and privateers, sailing in from Jamaica. This was where Hemingway went fishing, and this, supposedly, was where the Old Man fought with the big fish in The Old Man And The Sea. The Cubans have built Ernest a little monument in this village, a circle of columns that surround a simple bronze bust of the writer. He looks mischievous, an ironic smile on his lips, as if he were more than delighted to be breaking the rules of the American blockade, simply by being where he is. The coastguards waved at me from the battlements of the fortress as I took Hemingway's photo. There was nothing for them to do no more pirates sailing in from Jamaica and no more fishermen either.

I RETURNED to the streets of Havana with a will, and enjoyed the give and take. Everywhere there is someone to talk to: ``You wanna change money? Five to one, 10 to one, 20? ``You wan' cigars, real Havana?'' There was no threat in these approaches. Cubans need hard currency badly, but if I rejected what they had on offer they just shrugged their shoulders and talked about something else, baseball or Angola.

The main squares of old Havana, Cathedral Square and La Plaza de Armas, are wide and welcoming, attractive places with solid arcades built around them, constructed by the Spanish and meant to last. In the side streets the dying colonial mansions have elegant porticoes, both round and rectangular, supported on fluted columns with delicate balconies above. Each house seems to harbour more than one family and the washing hangs everywhere. The fading colours of pink and green and blue fall in flakes from the stucco, in a soft and soundless decay. On certain corners there are taller buildings that were grandiose once, in the 1920s and 1930s, and here and there a Mafia hotel waits patiently for the return of the old guard.

In the Calle Obispo are chemist shops transported direct from the 19th century. In one I sat on a bench and watched. On either side of me were old ladies and their grand-children, waiting for prescriptions. A line of people stood at a counter 35 paces long and high doorways let in a slanting and dusty light from the street. Behind the counter were shelves rising to a balcony, shelves loaded with apothecaries' jars, all coloured brilliantly by the powders and crystals inside them; yellow, crimson and olive green, all fading fast. Everywhere the grandeur of Havana is apparent, but it is disappearing, with little to save it except the tourists and their money.

Most of the tourists spend that money in the hotels of Varadero, along the coast from Havana a purpose-built paradise of blinding bright sand, palm trees and waiters along 20km of beach, a place where Canadians, Italians and the Brits fly in to disco all night and where the rum punch is brought to them in the morning as they repair their burnt and shattered bodies in gentle Jacuzzis. Here, as in Havana, the dollar shops do a brisk trade, and, since August, Cubans may come in too if they have the dollars to spend. It is a sad system, because dollar-hungry girls look you in the eye and then down to your desires, openly willing to exchange their needs for yours, laughing outright and flicking their tails like the girl from Ipanema.

In the Hotel Inglaterra I took an aperitif. A hotel built in the guise of a 1920s station waiting-room, the Inglaterra is decorated with Spanish tiles, and that afternoon a man in evening dress played a piano which echoed like the past under the high ceilings. A clatter of plates came from the dining-room and an elegant black girl gazed into the eyes of a middle-aged Italian dreaming of long leisurely meals and bright new clothes and soft underwear, while the Italian licked his chops. In a corner of the bar, a man made Havana cigars by hand, his movements barely perceptible. His hands floated and his skin was the same colour as the tobacco leaf he was rolling and the leaf was as thin as sunburnt skin, dead and peeled.

ON MY last day in Cuba my glasses fell apart and I took them into an optician's for repairs. He was a nervous little man and his workroom lay behind a shop that was really too bare to be called a shop. In the workroom was a wooden bench and a few tools. A radio blared and I wondered why it was so loud. The floor was bare cement and there was one tiny window, high up in the wall, and it gave a yellow light.

The optician had once been a teacher, but had taken different political views to the authorities and, as a consequence, had spent time in prison. ``I have a friend who has disappeared,'' he said. ``His mother tries to see him, but they turn her away. We think he is dead. If they knew I was talking to you like this I would be in prison again. What kind of a revolution is that? We are tired. We are proud, you know, proud of what we have done, but we are tired too. They say there is no money for soap, so they say. There is no water in my house, we carry it upstairs, my daughter cannot take a bath. There is no money for food or oil, but there is money to buy guns. Is this a revolution? You tourists say Cuba is a paradise... so it is, for you. The hotels are the best, but we cannot go into them. Tourists are blind. They do not go beyond their swimming pools, except for the Tropicana and a bus tour of Havana. I tell you, what the Americans are doing to us... it is 20 years out of date.''

I offered to pay in pesos, but he waved them away. When I gave him dollars he took them immediately, but then his face went white with anger he was angry with himself, angry with Fidel and angry with America. ``It is a good place, Cuba,'' he said, ``a place to love and a place to weep for.''

There was chaos at the airport. The computer had removed 50% of its passengers from the flight manifest and the next flight out was in two days' time. I talked to a young Norwegian who had done the country on his own.

"I went hitch-hiking with El Amarillo," he said, "out into Pinar del Rio, the western province. Beautiful. And the people!'' He shook his head in appreciation. "Wonderful. Miles and miles of empty beaches. Stayed with villagers, ate fish a couple of dollars a day. Rode in trucks, the best scuba diving ever.

"And the place is full of symbols," he said. "Did you notice?"

"The empty autopista,'' I said. "Coca-Cola being half the national drink the Cuba-libre... the shabby cowboys.''

"Nah,'' sneered the Norwegian. "I saw a one-legged man hopping across a river, getting in up to his neck.''

"Did he reach the other side?''

"I didn't see. I was on a lorry and we went on. I hope so, they're great these people... but one thing is certain a man with one leg sure needs a helping hand... I wonder who will give it him?''

Michael de Larrabeiti travelled as a guest of Thomson Holidays