As I sprinted towards the Matanzas train station, I was bracing myself for disappointment.

Even though I had left my Varadero hotel room at 5 a.m., two hours before the scheduled departure of the Hershey Train to Havana, it seemed as if I still hadn't gotten up early enough. Several local buses refused to pick me up because I was a tourist, and a bicycle taxi forced me to get off before my intended stop to avoid being spotted giving a ride to a foreigner, So I burst into the station a full ten minutes late.

Like most tourists who visit Cuba, I wanted to spend a day in Havana at the famous Plaza de Armas sipping mojitos in Ernest Hemingway's adopted home town, and I was starting to regret not taking one of the countless buses that shuttle tourists from Varadero's beaches to the capital and back in air-conditioned comfort.

But the man at the ticket counter said I had nothing to worry about: the seven o'clock train hadn't arrived yet. What the unreliability of Cuban transport had taken away, it had decided to give back.

"When will the train get here?" I asked.

"Viene cuando viene," he said. "It comes when it comes."

I bought a C $2 ticket and loitered on the uneven platform alongside Cuban businessmen in double-breasted suits, hospital workers coming home after a graveyard shift, and farmers carrying large sacks of produce.

About half an hour after its scheduled departure time, the Hershey Train finally shambled into the station in all its tattered glory. This classic 1920s Brill trolley was of the kind that used to transport commuters around North American cities for decades before the motor car came to dominate the streets. It was hard not to think that visitors would jump at the chance to ride it through the Cuban countryside although it could do with some refurbishment, and some might prefer a little more certainty that it would actually reach its destination.

The Hershey Train is one of the few remnants of a time when the most powerful man in Cuba was not a dictator but a candy maker. In the early 20th century, Milton Hershey, founder of the Hershey chocolate company, owned about 24,000 hectares of farmland and leased another 12,000 hectares where his company grew cocoa and sugar. With so much production, the American chocolatier also built a transportation infrastructure, including a 135-kilometre electric railway system to transport its produce to nearby ports and its workers to adjacent towns.

Today, Hershey's real estate holdings are long gone, but the train that he built to connect them still chugs along although like much of Cuba, worn down and neglected but managing to get by somehow.

On top of the train was a rickety transformer and four decrepit poles that fed power to the train's anaemic engine, and patches of rust now covered its once-cheerful green-and-yellow exterior.

The Hershey Train hardly qualified as a relaxing trip back in time. The electric trolley moved along slowly but swayed fiercely from side-to-side. Many seats had had their cushions ripped out. Doors between cars opened and slammed shut because they didn't close properly. It was also hard to enjoy the Cuban countryside since the windows were too grimy to see through clearly.

Of course, for the Cuban passengers the Hershey Train was not a scenic ride, but a vital means of transportation, one of the few ways to reach the small towns that dot the countryside. Many were wearing ragged remnants of American pop culture. An elderly lady wore a floral skirt and T-shirt that said "Pitt Panthers 1987-88 Big East Champs" while her husband sported a freshly pressed white dress shirt and a baseball cap advertising The Bonnie Hunt Show, a failed 1990s sitcom.

Across from me sat Yamila, a 20-something woman who worked as a waitress in one of Varadero's countless resorts. She was heading to the small town of San Antonio to make her weekly visit to her family and was bringing them several large bags filled with clothes and toiletries left behind in hotel rooms.

Across the aisle sat two teenage girls playing hooky. They giggled and joked around, writing their names on one of the few chairs on the train that still had its cushions.

About halfway along the train's route was the town of Hershey. In 1917, Milton Hershey built a large sugar-processing mill right by the train line along with an entire town for his workers, consisting of neat rows of American-style tract housing that looked like the setting for a 1950s sitcom.

After Cuba's revolution in 1959 Fidel Castro's government took over the mill and sold sugar to the Soviet Union. With the decline in both the price of sugar and Cuba's principal customer, the plant struggled for decades and closed for good in 2002. Today the mill and the houses nearby seem all but abandoned.

After a lengthy stop in Hershey we set off for the town of Guanabo where everyone filed off the train including the conductor, who told me this was the end of the line. Instead of going to Havana as it normally did, the train was heading back to Matanzas. When I asked him why, he simply told me that's just how it is.

I jumped on the first bus I saw although not entirely sure where it was heading. This turned out to be the town of Guanabacoa which had a Jewish cemetery built by Azhkenazim Jews in 1906. More than 1,400 Jews who emigrated from Spain as well as Central and Eastern Europe are buried here in tombs inscribed in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Spanish.

Outside the cemetery I met J?sus, a young Cuban on the way to visit his wife who worked at a school in central Havana. He ensured I boarded the right bus, sat with me, and guided me into the centre of town asking for nothing in return except some pleasant conversation.

Since Ra?l Castro took control of Cuba from his ailing brother last February the Cuban government appears to be easing up. Locals are allowed to stay in tourist hotels and interact with foreigners a little more. Still, it can still be hard to get a Cuban to let his guard down. I wanted to ask J?sus what he really thought about Fidel Castro's Revolution -- now celebrating its 50th anniversary -- but I never bothered. It would have been awkward and, besides, I wouldn't have gotten an honest answer. Instead, I just shook his hand and went on my way.

I finally arrived in Havana's ancient central square, the Plaza de Armas, ten hours after leaving my hotel room. I took some quick snapshots of the Colonial architecture and flipped through the yellowing pages of used books sold by street vendors. I went to Papa Hemingway's favourite watering hole of La Bodeguita del Medio, but couldn't get in because it was packed with other foreigners equally eager for a drink.

After a couple of hours in Old Havana I headed back to Varadero on a tourist bus. This time there were no delays, no ripped-out seats, no clanging doors, and no musty windows. There were also no Cubans except for the bus driver, since most locals couldn't afford the price of plush seating and comfortably chilly air-conditioning. Three hours later, I was back in my hotel room.

Looking back on it, I remember just about every minute of my chaotic ride on the Hershey Train and the brief glimpse it gave me into Cuban life. But I can barely recall anything about the bus ride back.

If you go:

Matanzas is located approximately 30 kilometres outside Varadero. V?azul (www.viazul.cu) runs tourist buses three times daily from Varadero to the Matanzas bus station in Calle Terry.

From the bus station, it is best to take a taxi to the Hershey train station located at Calle 67 in the northern district of Versalles (tel. 45-24-7254). There are five daily departures between Matanzas and Havana. Hershey trains making the return trip from Havana to Matanzas depart from the Casablanca Station (tel. 7-862-4888).