[peckrob]

> Aside from the beautiful beaches the thing that struck me most was the desperate poverty of people living in shacks outside the 5 star resorts.

This is, unfortunately, not a problem unique to Cuba. I had this very same reaction when my wife and I vacationed in Jamaica. To get to this lush, tropical all-inclusive resort, you spend two hours riding in a minibus across bumpy barely-paved roads through some of the most abject poverty I've witnessed anywhere. It was very difficult to reconcile the insulated world of endless food and finely manicured lawns inside the resort with the world you witness just outside its gates.