Ruaridh Nicoll

I have dengue, a vile and potentially life-threatening virus given to me by an Aedes mosquito. For good reason, it used to be called breakbone fever. It’s not the first time. I last felt my eyes swell and my joints being crushed five years ago, almost to the day. Dengue is common in Cuba, increasingly so since the government ran out of the money to fumigate for mosquitos. The first time was worse – so far. It arrived like a cloud of poison gas; I barely got up the stairs before collapsing. I was more naive then and what followed, in the fug of fever, taught me a lot about my Cuban family and the Cuban state. People are selling water door to door. We’re hearing of dysentery. How far away is cholera?

I have a sideline in travel writing, so am lucky enough to have seen some very lovely beaches. Few are as spectacular as Cuba’s Varadero. There are others I prefer – Cossies in the Cocos (Keeling), if you happen to be passing, or the hidden beach at Achmelvich in Scotland, where I shivered between granite walls in my childhood summers. But if classic sun, sea and sand is your thing, Varadero’s 12-mile, palm-fringed spit is unbeatable. It took me years of living in Cuba to visit. I believed that Varadero was all about package tourism – socialist package tourism. Then I went and walked those infinite sands at dawn, the water as clear and intoxicating as absinthe, and got over myself. Now my family and I have moved here for a month.

The US ambassador’s residence in Havana has a beautiful garden that steps down past a blue fountain to a hole in the hedge containing an eagle with spread wings. It’s a lovely place for a party. The trouble is, given the current state of relations between Cuba and the US, cocktails have become a continuation of politics by other means. The embassy invites people who disagree with Cuba’s communist government, and Cuba’s interior ministry stops them from coming. The eagle is pertinent. It once stood atop the monument to the USS Maine, a warship that blew up in Havana harbor in 1898, killing 266 sailors. It seems to have been a terrible accident, but the then-assistant navy secretary, Teddy Roosevelt, blamed Cuba’s then-colonial master, Spain.

When I first moved to Cuba, an ex-girlfriend said: “That sounds lovely, Ruaridh. What next, Thailand?” The Caribbean island has always come with a certain reputation – the writer A.A. Gill noted that the Cubans are the “most libidinously choreographed people in the world.” It wasn’t the revolution that made Cuba known for sex. The sleaze goes way back, probably to 1492 and beyond (naughty Tainos), but by the 1950s, Havana’s infamous Shanghai Theater was putting on live sex shows, performed by a gentleman called “Superman” – and not because he could fly. Such libertine ways – and the mob that controlled then – were part of the reason Fidel Castro gave for tumbling the then dictatorship.

We may not be happy campers here in Havana. But increasingly we are campers. Enter any home, from the most privileged (a relative term these days as the blackouts rise to 22 hours a day) to the poorest, and the trappings of off-grid living are everywhere. Some of the kit wouldn’t shame the back of a hedge-fund weekend warrior’s tricked out Jeep as it wended its way into the wilds of Glacier National Park. Do you know what an Ecoflow Delta Ultra 3 is? Well I didn’t, until recently. It’s the latest in “portable power stations.” Basically a big battery, it can keep a freezer running for 12 hours, or power several fans through the night. But at $1,500, it’s 150 times the average Cuban monthly pension.

The last time I visited Cuba’s national botanic gardens, there was a wedding in a tucked-away corner by the Japanese pool. The happy couple stood at the water’s edge as jacanas – Jesus birds – walked the lily pads behind them. I have been thinking about that couple, as we’ve just heard that the botanics have closed due to the oil blockade the US is imposing on the island. The gardens were an escape in a collapsing city, not that we could still reach them, as there is no fuel. I have a small boy, Santiago, and it’s hard to entertain him in these trying times. On calm days, there is the beach, the beautiful miles of sand to the city’s undeveloped east, but with an empty gas tank, that too is out of reach.

My wife Camila doesn’t drive, but she does direct. Studying the map, she’ll say, “This road!”, and before I know it, we’re off down some track, startling locals who haven’t seen a “yuma” – technically an American but really any foreigner – for years. Cuba is a country that lends itself to country road adventure. Besides drinking daiquiris, it’s perhaps my favorite thing to do. And it’s what I miss most now that it’s impossible: the US oil blockade that began in January means there is no gasoline. ‘Is this ceviche the red snapper or the snook?’ I asked. The waiter shrugged, ‘Once it’s ceviche it’s hard to tell’ Few others seem to do it.

Now, I’m here to write about life in Havana, about daiquiris, fishing and salsa. But it’s fair to say life in Cuba has been getting a bit intense. Not as tense as it is elsewhere, but we’re very definitely on the list of countries where the US wants regime change. Washington has cranked up its 64-year trade embargo on the island into an all-out oil blockade. Donald Trump said he is hoping to conduct a “friendly takeover” of the island. The Habanos cigar festival, which I had been planning to write about, has been “postponed.” So I find myself pushing aside my notes on the ever-higher prices of Behikes, instead scribbling the word, “siege” on my page. It all seems a little medieval.

A frisson of fear tends to run through non-Americans when they face immigration in the United States. For years, young Brits have been warned prior to their first trip: “When you meet the immigration officer, don’t make jokes!” To boys cultivated to be insouciant in Britain’s posher schools, this usually means approaching the booth nervously repeating, “Don’t say bomb, don’t say bomb” – hopefully under their breath. However, I’d say the officers guarding America’s borders are among the most welcoming, and sometimes even funny, I’ve met – I’m excluding ICE, who sound awful. It’s often a surprise given I’m usually arriving from a country firmly on America’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list: Cuba.

My apartment in Havana is on a rooftop overlooking the sea, which sounds grand and penthousey, but it’s not – it’s the former caretaker’s hut. It also sits above my parents-in-law’s place, which offers challenges, but does mean that most days I wander down for lunch. When I first moved in, I didn’t speak Spanish and so would enjoy these meals in ignorant bliss, smiling winningly as I guzzled down pork, rice and beans. I tried not to ask my now-wife to translate because I didn’t want to interrupt what I imagined were hugely erudite discussions; she’s a literary professor and her parents are both philosophers. Slowly, though, I began to understand, Spanish revealing itself like a song on the wind.

A cold front blew in off the Florida Straits, sending waves over Havana’s famous corniche, the Malecón, and announcing what has traditionally been the end of the hurricane season. After 13 named storms, it seems as if the 2025 season finale was Hurricane Melissa, a humdinger. She paused south of Jamaica, getting herself into a lather, before killing 32 on that lovely island and causing at least $7 billion of damage. Fortunately for Cuba to the north, Jamaica’s mountains plucked the murder from Melissa’s eye – but she still cut a devastating trail through this bigger island’s eastern reaches a day or so later.