Cuba is the Caribbean’s hottest destination. In recent years, dozens of luxury hotels have popped up across the island, but it was the Communist country’s timeworn cities that beguiled Joanna Lumley. “We wanted to go now because there’s a feeling that it might change, and then we wouldn’t see the old Cuba: the shabby-chic splendour of Havana and the beautiful old American cars,” says the actress, who explores Cuba and neighbouring Haiti in her latest travel documentary. “You can see how it must have been in the 50s when Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill and Marlene Dietrich went there. Everybody who was anybody stayed at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, and the Mafia were over there running gambling dens. It was a very glamorous destination, but it all stopped overnight when the revolution came.”
Six decades after Fidel Castro and his comrades seized control, the Caribbean’s biggest island is a place of stark contrasts. Political isolation and US sanctions – which President Trump has reinforced – mean it’s stuck in a time warp, and blackouts and food rationing are an everyday occurrence. And yet Cuba is also renowned for its impressive education and healthcare systems. “There are more doctors and dentists than you can shake a stick at,” says Lumley. “Education standards are really high. It’s extremely clean. Everybody’s got a job, even if your job is just sweeping the verge.”
Along with cigars, Latin music is the island’s most famous export and one of the highlights for Lumley was meeting a legendary rumba group, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Unlike the rumba you see on Strictly, their music is a form of spirituality. “Their drumming rhythms and dance sequences are so sophisticated. It was mindblowing… Cuba is a land of music. We spent several days filming in Havana and at night we ate in a little café around the corner from the hotel. Sometimes they’d say, ‘Sorry, we have no eggs tonight’, because there were food shortages. But they would always have fantastic live music.”
Could the West learn from Cuba? “Yes, a lot. [Communists] believe truly in education. They believe in culture, so they subsidise opera, ballet and theatre. We’ve stopped doing that in this country, so we’re becoming rather philistine. When I travelled through Russia, for example, children were sitting watching [the opera] Boris Godunov. Their tickets had cost maybe 50p, and they were utterly rapt because they go to the opera every week. There it’s normal for an eight-year-old to listen to classical music, but it’s alien in the UK. We don’t teach children classical music. You have to be rich and it’s considered elitist.”
Like Cuba, Haiti is a country defined by revolution. “It was the first black republic in the world,” says Lumley. “Slaves overthrew their French masters in the midst of the French Revolution. I visited a World Heritage Site called the Citadelle – a vast castle on the steepest hill – that the slaves built after they’d triumphed. They dragged captured cannons up there and said, ‘Nobody will ever overcome us again’.”
Nobody did, but centuries of crippling debt, corrupt regimes and a string of natural disasters – including an earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people – have led to extreme poverty and chronic instability. “Port-au-Prince [the capital] is an absolute catastrophe. We arrived there on the day of a riot, so we had to have a police escort to the hotel. Riots break out like wildfires across the country and if you’re in that place, you’re stuck. All the aid workers in Port-au-Prince don’t go to the parts we went to because they’re no-go areas.”
Lumley and her camera crew were ambushed while driving in the mountains. “Suddenly there was a blockage across the road: they’d put branches down. Luckily, we had two big bodyguards who got out and said, ‘Come on guys, clear this away’. And they went, ‘No, we want your money or your life’. Sometimes they dig trenches, pour oil in and set fire to it, then they come with guns and take your wallets.
Eventually, the bandits let them pass. You could be forgiven for jumping on the first flight out after that, but Lumley is made of sterner stuff. “I’m not really an afraid kind of person. If you look timid, people and animals pick it up very fast. In Haiti, people are so poor and living in such squalor, but if you say ‘Bonjour’ and put your hand out, you’ve made friends immediately.”
She turns 74 this year, but has no plans to curtail her adventures. “I don’t think years have anything to do with it. I’ve met people who are much younger than me who act older. You are as old as you feel, and I can still do these things, so I’m doing them.”
Cuba is the Caribbean’s hottest destination. In recent years, dozens of luxury hotels have popped up across the island, but it was the Communist country’s timeworn cities that beguiled Joanna Lumley. “We wanted to go now because there’s a feeling that it might change, and then we wouldn’t see the old Cuba: the shabby-chic splendour of Havana and the beautiful old American cars,” says the actress, who explores Cuba and neighbouring Haiti in her latest travel documentary. “You can see how it must have been in the 50s when Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill and Marlene Dietrich went there. Everybody who was anybody stayed at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, and the Mafia were over there running gambling dens. It was a very glamorous destination, but it all stopped overnight when the revolution came.”
Six decades after Fidel Castro and his comrades seized control, the Caribbean’s biggest island is a place of stark contrasts. Political isolation and US sanctions – which President Trump has reinforced – mean it’s stuck in a time warp, and blackouts and food rationing are an everyday occurrence. And yet Cuba is also renowned for its impressive education and healthcare systems. “There are more doctors and dentists than you can shake a stick at,” says Lumley. “Education standards are really high. It’s extremely clean. Everybody’s got a job, even if your job is just sweeping the verge.”
Along with cigars, Latin music is the island’s most famous export and one of the highlights for Lumley was meeting a legendary rumba group, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Unlike the rumba you see on Strictly, their music is a form of spirituality. “Their drumming rhythms and dance sequences are so sophisticated. It was mindblowing… Cuba is a land of music. We spent several days filming in Havana and at night we ate in a little café around the corner from the hotel. Sometimes they’d say, ‘Sorry, we have no eggs tonight’, because there were food shortages. But they would always have fantastic live music.”
Could the West learn from Cuba? “Yes, a lot. [Communists] believe truly in education. They believe in culture, so they subsidise opera, ballet and theatre. We’ve stopped doing that in this country, so we’re becoming rather philistine. When I travelled through Russia, for example, children were sitting watching [the opera] Boris Godunov. Their tickets had cost maybe 50p, and they were utterly rapt because they go to the opera every week. There it’s normal for an eight-year-old to listen to classical music, but it’s alien in the UK. We don’t teach children classical music. You have to be rich and it’s considered elitist.”
Like Cuba, Haiti is a country defined by revolution. “It was the first black republic in the world,” says Lumley. “Slaves overthrew their French masters in the midst of the French Revolution. I visited a World Heritage Site called the Citadelle – a vast castle on the steepest hill – that the slaves built after they’d triumphed. They dragged captured cannons up there and said, ‘Nobody will ever overcome us again’.”
Nobody did, but centuries of crippling debt, corrupt regimes and a string of natural disasters – including an earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people – have led to extreme poverty and chronic instability. “Port-au-Prince [the capital] is an absolute catastrophe. We arrived there on the day of a riot, so we had to have a police escort to the hotel. Riots break out like wildfires across the country and if you’re in that place, you’re stuck. All the aid workers in Port-au-Prince don’t go to the parts we went to because they’re no-go areas.”
Lumley and her camera crew were ambushed while driving in the mountains. “Suddenly there was a blockage across the road: they’d put branches down. Luckily, we had two big bodyguards who got out and said, ‘Come on guys, clear this away’. And they went, ‘No, we want your money or your life’. Sometimes they dig trenches, pour oil in and set fire to it, then they come with guns and take your wallets.
Eventually, the bandits let them pass. You could be forgiven for jumping on the first flight out after that, but Lumley is made of sterner stuff. “I’m not really an afraid kind of person. If you look timid, people and animals pick it up very fast. In Haiti, people are so poor and living in such squalor, but if you say ‘Bonjour’ and put your hand out, you’ve made friends immediately.”
She turns 74 this year, but has no plans to curtail her adventures. “I don’t think years have anything to do with it. I’ve met people who are much younger than me who act older. You are as old as you feel, and I can still do these things, so I’m doing them.”