Santiago is the second-largest city in Cuba. The first part of the bus ride from Baracoa to Santiago was on a windy mountain road and the scenery was beautiful - hills and valleys smothered in greenery. Later we passed through Guantánamo city, which seemed like a nice place.

In Santiago we had a taxi driver take us around several of the outlying sights in the morning - he drove a cool old car which he had restored himself, a turquoise-coloured Plymouth.

First we stopped at the vast Revolution Square and saw the huge monument to General Antonio Maceo - a famous fighter for Cuban independence from Spain who originated from Santiago.

We visited the Moncada Barracks (it is now converted into a school and museum), which is an important location in the history of the Cuban revolution - one of the first attacks led by Fidel Castro was on this barracks on 26 July 1958. The attack went wrong, 64 revolutionaries were captured by the army, tortured and killed; others fled into the mountains and were captured a few days later (including Fidel himself). The museum that is now housed in the barracks explains a lot about the revolution and various key figures involved (unsurprisingly, it provides a one-sided view of affairs). There is a section focusing on the brutal torture and killings of revolutionaries by Batista's forces, including graphic photos and examples of torture instruments used.

Then we went to the grave of José Martí, the famous Cuban writer, at Cementerio Santa Ifigenia. Martí died in 1895 in a battle against Spanish forces; although he never expressed communist sentiments he was a staunch proponent of Cuban independence from Spain and was very anti-American so he was adopted as a symbol of the revolution - he is a revered figure, very widely quoted, every town in Cuba has to have a street named after him by law and there are pictures and statues of him all over the place. Martí's mausoleum is attended by guards - I watched the elaborate changing of the guards ceremony. There are many other fancy graves in the same cemetery, including that of General Antonio Maceo and Emilio Bacardí y Moreau (son of the founder of the Bacardí rum company - the company was founded in Santiago but was forced to leave the country after the revolution).

We took a trip to the very beautiful old Spanish castle/fort on the coast, Castillo de San Pedro del Morro, which now houses a museum with information about the real pirates of the Caribbean. It provides a great view over Santiago town, the sea and the surrounding Sierra Maestra mountains, which is where Castro's rebel army hid out when they were planning their early attacks (the view is slightly blotted by a factory chugging out smoke next to the harbour!).

The main square in Santiago town, Parque Cespedes, is dominated by the cathedral. There were people begging and trying to scam tourists everywhere - selling cheap cigars, offering places to eat or stay or just following me around saying things about the town and then expecting me to pay them for their 'guidance'! There was an old lady walking around pretending to smoke a big cigar so that tourists would pay her money for a photograph (I didn't). I visited Casa de Diego Velázquez - the oldest house in Cuba which now serves as a furniture museum. I also went to the Rum Museum where I enjoyed a free sample of Havana Club. In Plaza de Dolores there was a band of old men playing music.

In the evening we went up to the rooftop bar at Hotel Casa Granda in the main sqaure to watch the sunset with their (very bad) mojitos. Later we went for a nice dinner at a 'paladar' and then to Casa de la Trova (traditional music venue), which had live salsa music. Paul McCartney visited this Casa de la Trova during a brief visit to Cuba in 2000. I stayed there until it closed, chatting to Noel from Cork and Sasha from Guilford, then we sat in the Parque Cespedes and talked into the early hours.

Outside the Casa de la Trova there were guys trying to persuade tourists to pay their way in to the bar and buy them drinks. They are referred to as 'jineteros' (jockeys) though this is a potentially misleading term since it is applied to everyone from relatively low-level swindlers (like those seeking a free drink) to outright prostitutes.

The political envirnoment in Cuba is a bit confusing - it's not clear what the people are for and what they are against but there is a general sense that they want change. Officially they seem to like the label 'socialist' and not 'communist'. Capitalism and anything American are deemed to be 'bad' although I've seen quite a few people in American t-shirts and it's possible to find Coca-Cola (made in Mexico) if you look in the right places. Pretty much everything is owned by the state - the state owns all the land so the government is the only entity people can buy houses from or sell houses to. The vast majority of jobs come from the government too. Most people I met see the failings of the current system.

I haven't seen advertising of any kind - only revolutionary slogans and government education campaigns.

There is an unusual double currency system in operation in Cuba - 'Cuban pesos' is the primary currency of local people for day-to-day things but it is not often used by tourists because it can't be used to pay in most shops, restaurants or official taxis - these require 'Cuban convertible pesos' (24 local pesos = 1 convertible). The result is that tourists pay many times more for things than locals, which arguably is fair considering how little the locals earn. A consequence of this is that Cubans who work with tourists or have some other means of obtaining convertibles have access to many more things than others, which arguably isn't fair and creates perverse incentives regarding tourism and tourists.