And so it was, I wanted to go to Havana

Watching the Godfather and how the gangsters such as Meyer Lansky, friend of the then dictator Batista, had to flee their illegal casinos on New Years Eve 1958 as Fidel marched into town, announcing the revolution, I wanted to go to Havana.

Visiting Rosario in Argentina, the birthplace of Che Guevara, and in later years visiting his family home in Alta Gracia, near Cordoba, I wanted to go to Havana.

Reading the great novels of Hemingway, affectionately known in Cuba simply as “Ernesto”, and about how he frequented the bars, one of the most famous now being La Floridita, I wanted to go to Havana

Watching 13 Days, the film based on the tense times in the JFK administration during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, I wanted to go to Havana.

Watching footage over the years of the rather bizarrely dressed, often in a tracksuit, little man in a green cap and long beard, I wanted to go to Havana.

Reading Graham Greene, I determined that one day, I would be THAT man in Havana.