Havana diary

Parts of Havana are modernising fast

Newshour's Claire Bolderson and Piers Scholfield are in Cuba, blogging the changes taking place as Raul Castro seeks to establish himself in power.

Day One by Claire Bolderson

My first ever visit to Cuba began with a kiss on the cheek by way of greeting from the President's daughter, and ended with an offer of marriage from a cigar-chomping, rum-drinking interviewee who'd just told me with great passion about the economic changes under way in his country.

It might have been the rum talking of course, but I do detect a buzz in the air, in Havana at least.

Maybe I've been influenced by the blazing hot sun, blue skies and well-advanced restoration of much of old Havana.

It's a much prettier place than I had expected, and of course the bursts of music coming out of just about every bar help lift the mood.

The economic reforms may be relatively modest so far - access to more consumer goods and to hotels previously off limits to locals, promises of productivity wage bonuses and less state control over agriculture - but it's enough to make people feel the really bad times of the years post-Soviet collapse are well and truly over.

The question now is, how far will Raul Castro go? Certainly he's raised expectations and lots of people are hoping there'll be more in his big speech marking the anniversary of the start of the revolution on 26 July.

Day Two by Piers Scholfield

Hi, I'm Piers Scholfield, I'll be editing the programme from Havana.

As Claire has already mentioned, there is an air of expectation in Cuba at the moment, especially ahead of Raul Castro's big speech on July 26th.

Will he announce another reform? If so, will it mean a real change for Cubans?

Could it be another step towards what other countries see as normality? A couple of things have struck me in the couple of days we've been here.

Yesterday our taxi driver was genuinely astonished to encounter a (brief) traffic jam in central Havana.

It was about 8.30am, most people were on their way to work.

In Paris, Luanda and Bogotá, the streets would be bumper to bumper chaos - traffic jams are a way of life.

Not in Havana though, here the roads are virtually empty - there simply aren't enough cars.

The restrictions on buying and selling your own vehicles might have something to do with it.

As a radio producer in the field, you spend most of your time 'phone-bashing' - calling people, following up contacts, calling again and again in order to persuade/charm/irritate people into giving interviews.

Here it's slightly different. If you want to remember a world free of mobile phones, come and visit.

Foreigners and officials have them, but most Cubans only have access to a landline, if that.

It means a lot of scrambling around Havana to talk to people face-to-face.

More sociable, certainly. But a world apart from that of the 24/7 Blackberry.

Day Three by Claire Bolderson

We've been for a weekend in the countryside, staying with a Cuban family in a Casa Particular.

Those are the houses where families rent out rooms to tourists.

It's a good way of earning some convertible currency and about the closest you'll get to private enterprise in Cuba.

Our Casa, in the pretty town of Vinales, was welcoming and comfortable and the evening meal cooked in the tiny family kitchen was superb.

One of the good things about staying with a family is hearing their stories, like the fact that a daughter was a "Balcera", literally, "a rafter", one of the thousands of Cubans who risk their lives in small crafts to get to Florida.

She didn't tell them she was going, the first they knew was a telephone call from Miami.

We've also learned about the whole Casa system.

You can't rent out more than two rooms and you have to pay a fixed fee to the government regardless of the income you get from the business.

If nobody shows up for weeks, you still have to pay.

Day Four By Claire Bolderson

Vinales is only a small town but it has at least three "memorials" to the Cuban Five, the men who first got me into this whole trip.

They're in prison in the US, convicted of espionage and in two cases, conspiracy to murder.

I interviewed one of them last year from his prison in California.

He acknowledged infiltrating the hard line anti-Castro groups in Florida, he said he had to in order to stop what Cuba calls "terrorist" attacks by exiles on its soil.

But he's always denied conspiracy to murder and at least one US appeals court has raised questions about the fairness of the original trial.

It's a huge issue for the Cuban government.

Hence the little road-side shrines with pictures of all five and references to them as Heroes.

Claire and Piers will be broadcasting tomorrow's 1300GMT edition of Newshour live from Havana. Send them your questions or comments here.

You can see pictures from Cuba on the BBC World Service flickr stream, here.