We have a very similar journey into the past, you and I. Well, my grandparents on my father's side lived in a remote village in that province of Pinar del Rio. Not in the city. My father and his brothers built them a comfortable house of masonry, but they lived in a wooden house, with wide single-pane windows. It was very nice to go there on vacation. There were no streets either, just a royal road, as they called it, dusty, sandy. And it was exactly as you describe. We also got our water from a well. In fact there in my blog, in a post I wrote about a farm, I portrayed a clay jar, because it reminded me of where my grandparents kept that fresh water that we drank, after filtering it through a stone. How wonderful... I think of that with great affection.