Cuba.

Spent a week in Cuba for the end of summer and got to see so many interesting things and learned a lot about this country. Havana’s Paseo del Prado was a stately boulevard lined with trees which, at its peak, must have been just as grand as the Champs-Élysées. Here, children played makeshift soccer matches while others zoomed past them on their roller blades, street vendors sold candy and confectionery, and couples sat on the stone benches under the trees killing time in the humid heat.

The thing I was most shocked by was the incredibly aggressive tipping culture that existed amongst the service staff that dealt with tourists. But when our tour guide told us how a month’s worth of salary from any legitimate job was barely enough for a single day’s expenses, it all started to make sense. Cuba has all the exquisite European-style façades and endless beaches with crystal clear water, but social inequities still run rampant.

Strolling through the streets of Havana, I would see so many souvenir shops selling exactly the same merchandise as each other, but none sold postcards. The only postcards I could ever find during my trip were in the museum stores run by the government, and every store had the same, very ugly postcards. It was only when I arrived at the store at the Palace of the Captains General that I realized that every single postcard in stock was from the same photo studio. Not sure what kind of scheme was happening there.

At the resort in Varadero, it was probably one of the only times I truly enjoyed a beach. The glittering water at the beach made rainbow coloured refractions dance across the ridges on the sand underneath. Further out into the sea, I dived into the water from a catamaran and was immediately surrounded by schools of multicoloured fish. It was the first time I had snorkelled, and the sight of having fish swirling around me was quite unforgettable.

The unstable wi-fi connection in our hotel made it quite difficult to keep up with the news and with friends while in Cuba, but in a sense it was also an opportunity to try to detox and stop relying on my smartphone for everything.

But, to be honest, I’m not sure what to make of my time here. It was relaxing on the one hand but also extremely shocking to see the two very different worlds that existed for people in this country.