Havana’s heartbeat is the pounding of drums.
Infectious rumba and salsa music are ever-present,
along with the everyday sounds: cries of peanut
hawkers – ‘Mani, mani!’ – and the rattle of handcarts
over cobbles. Ladies shout to their neighbours as they
hang out washing in colourful lines like bunting, dogs
yip from balconies, and the tinny noise of a televised
baseball game spills from a window where a man
stands shaving his chin with a cut-throat razor. It often
seems that all the drama of life here is lived out on the
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with its crumbling colonial buildings and its classic
cars belching bluish exhaust fumes
into the air. But behind the city’s pastel-painted
façades and ornate wrought-iron grilles, there is a
whole world to be discovered – all it takes is to pull
back the curtain...
WORDS^ CHRISTA LARWOOD
@clarwood O^ PHOTOGRAPHSPHILIP LEE HARVEY@PhilipLeeHarvey