Cuba

Take a trip back in time: in Havana, venerable chrome-finned Cadillacs and Buicks cruise the pot-holed streets, paint flakes and peels off the stucco houses and women in flounced skirts and turbans smoke cigars as they sit at their flower-stalls. It’s a photographer’s dream and a traveller’s delight, as long as you’re willing to sacrifice a little comfort for memories that will last forever.

Admire the wedding-cake Capitol Building, go to the Museum of the Revolution, and then head down-country, to sleepy, charming Trinidad with its cobbles and pony carts, into the mountains to Fidel Castro’s retreat where Che Guevara laid his beret, through the forest where tiny hummingbirds hover and steep limestone peaks pierce the green jungle.

Enjoy a rum in a tiny roof-top bar in Santiago, channelling Graham Greene and Hemingway; tap your foot to the infectious rhythms of the samba. Try cycling along quiet roads through beautiful scenery or snorkelling in warm crystal-clear waters over the Cayo Blanco reef.

Stay in a private home, a casa particulare, and get to know the locals – you’ll remember them long after the cigars are gone.