Eoin Bassett in Havana

Vedado is coated in gloom. All Havana is cast in a hard darkness and the black smoke of the ancient taxis is periodically visible under the one dim lamp on the street. The roots of the dripping trees rise up through the cracked pavements and dogs make their homes under them while the locals walk on the rubble-strewn roads for fear of tripping.

In the park I am preparing to sleep. All the benches have planks missing, each one from a different position. I wonder was it malice or compassion that decided the thief to leave one or two rungs on each for the broken traveller.

With my Visa stolen along with my bag, and access to money non-existent. I am now living like an ordinary Cuban. I spend my days sweatily slogging around the city from bank to bank, waiting for hours in line for nothing but indifference. My feet are raw, my lips are chapped and peso rum my only comfort. Like many young Cubans I no longer blame the blockade, but other Cubans.

Havana is a war. The night clubs are populated with fat old Europeans with oily hair and their teenage whores, with bad music on repeat through lack of other bad music. In Mexico I knew what the man with the knife or pistol wanted. The age old tradition of armed robbery intact.

Here they f*** you smiling. The thieves are middle aged women calling themselves your Cuban mother...they are "students' doing questionnaires...they are beautiful women who 'love your smile'... Shirts go missing from your bag to be replaced by tatty jumpers. Your Cuban friend's invitation for drinks turns out to be an invitation to pay for seven other people.

The inhabitants of Havana have inherited the avarice of their enemies. They want the All American lifestyle they so firmly believe all the rest of the world to have. The Cuban word for foreigner is 'extranero,' in English, 'stranger'. After knowing the same families and friends for a month I am still 'the stranger'. This in itself tells the story of tourism in Cuba.

Always exploitative, and predominantly North American, now it is Europeans who populate the beaches and hotels Cubans are barred from. It is Italian, German, Spanish and English men that amuse themselves with the compañeras, guided by the compañeros.

I can understand the harsh and indifferent view most Habañeros have of outsiders. I can understand the obsession with money and material things.

I just don't like it, and this 'stranger' is going home.