James Stone

Havana may be one of the world's most dilapidated and neglected capitals, but somehow the crumbling ruins of times gone just adds to the charm. I had spent ten days in the city the locals call 'La Habana', and while I enjoyed my time there immensely, I fancied to get out in the open – I needed to venture outside of the tourist honey pot that the city has become and hit the open road.

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In Cuba, you have two options for accommodation. Hotels or 'casas particularas'. Due to the autocratic government, currently led by Raul Castro as his brother Fidel is in hospital with digestion problems, you must state where you are going to stay when you enter the country at customs. The authorities like to keep an eye on you – but no-one would be able to monitor me on the adventure I had planned.

With my travelling mate Sid I stayed in a casa particular – a guest house. These are homes owned by ordinary Cubans that have been inspected by the government and deemed fit for foreign nationals to stay in. All the hotels are unfortunately tied up within grand tourist complexes that, while providing a stunning beach holiday, do not give you the true impression of Cuba.

So that morning, we woke up to our usual humungous three course breakfast. The first course consisted of freshly prepared fruit: apples, oranges, bananas and lashings of water melon. Then we moved onto the sausage and egg, before finishing up with some orange juice and fresh Cuban coffee.

We were pretty stuffed I can tell you, but, as happens often when you visit Cuba, I felt really guilty. Sixty-seven-year-old Milta, the senora of the house and an ex-civil servant, prepared the breakfast and was delighted when we heartedly dispatched it ready for our journey. But the truth is, ordinary Cubans never eat this kind of food themselves.

She contented herself with a banana puree type soup and a cup of tea while we lived like kings. Yet she was over the moon with the amount we were paying for it: £4. For the night's accommodation as well.

Sid and I decided that we would have to put our humanist concerns to one side and get going with the adventure in hand. We rented two scooters, no licences of course but a few extra dollars solved this problem (and secured us a few beers for our travels), and just hit the open road.

We decided that we would head west, out into the countryside, before returning to the coast to the beautiful shores of the Pinar del Rio, towards the western arm of the island, but once we got out of Havana we took a wrong turn. Who cares we said. So we just kept going.

Most of Cuba's infrastructure was developed in the 1920s and 1930s before the islands reached its heyday as a playground for the rich and famous back in the 1950s. Since the Cuban revolution in 1959 there hasn't been too much structural development due to the US embargo but this didn't worry us.

The scenery was breathtaking, as we blazed down the empty highways (only the very richest Cubans can afford cars) we couldn't get enough of the palm trees and lush green fauna that seemed to roll eternally into the horizon.

After a few hours we came to a little village, having been greeted by a giant smiling Castro poster stating: Victoria en la neuvo millennium! Socialismo o Muerte! [Victory into the new millennium! Socialism or Death!]

Kids wearing nothing but ragged shorts and T-shirts ran up to us as we shot through – okay it was little over 30mph as we were on scooters – and tried to run alongside us. It was magic.

Eventually the rush of the wind through our hair and the thrill of the chase came to an end as we reached one of the country's typically serene and tranquil beaches. But after the rush and thrill of the authentic Cuban countryside, it felt almost like a let-down.