CUBAN EXCURSIONS

1.The Hemingway Trail:

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), the American novelist and Nobel Laureate (1954) arrived in Cuba in late 1939 and spent much of his life there until 1955. 

From 5th floor of  the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana, where Hemingway lived in Room 551 and where he wrote 'Death in the Afternoon'.

Hemingway's affection for Cuba stemmed from his love of fishing. He came to know the island's waters well and when, in 1941, America joined WW2, with the full support of the American ambassador to Cuba he began to spy on Nazi sympathisers. He gathered enough information to have his 12m fishing boat Pilar commissioned and equipped by the Chief of Naval Intelligence for Central America as a kind of Q-ship, i.e. an armed and disguised merchant ship used as a decoy or to destroy submarines.

Although he never engaged directly with German submarines, he was commended by the ambassador for his efforts. Critics, including his wife Martha Gellhorn, were sceptical, believing the whole thing was a ruse to obtain rationed petrol for his fishing expeditions. His exploits, true or imagined, made their way into his novel 'Islands in the Stream'.

An interesting article on his time in Cuba can be found in the following link:

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/65aug/6508manning.htm

Finca la Vigia: Museo Ernest Hemingway

We travelled to San Francisco de Paula, a suburb south of Havana, to the single-storey former cattle ranch where Hemingway lived for 20 years. On top of a hill, this 19th century villa has been preserved almost exactly as he left it. Frustratingly, we couldn't walk into any of the rooms because of the risk of theft, but we were able to view everything through the open windows and doors.

Inside drinks and magazines are strewn about, and the dining room table is set for guests

....bedrooms are ready 

......numerous stuffed animal heads adorn the walls

.....and thousands of books line the shelves.

The small room where his typewriter is still stationed was where he did much of his work, often in the mornings and usually standing up.

Outside, we walked around the well-kept gardens.

He DID write 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' here.

The graves of 4 of his dogs

 are next to the empty swimming pool

while his fishing boat is suspended inside a wooden pavilion.

Steve walked to the top of the lookout tower

and saw the fabulous view from the top.

Cojimar:

From here we drove to the tiny fishing village of Cojimar, where Hemingway kept his yacht El Pilar. Gregorio Fuentes, the Pilar's first mate, lived here and claimed to be the old man upon whom Hemingway based Santiago, the protagonist of his Pulitzer- and Nobel-Prize winning novel 'The Old Man and the Sea'. Up until the late 1990s Fuentes could be seen sitting outside his house or in the restaurant of La Terraza de Cojimar, charging US$10 for a consultation with eager fans.(He died in 2002, aged 104.)

Where better then to head for than La Terraza for a  Don Gregorio cocktail?

Then on to the waterfront

 and the Cojimar Malecon (the sea wall), where the old Spanish fort is now a coastguard station.

There's not an awful lot to do here on a balmy Saturday afternoon other than the simple pleasure of wandering around, enjoying the scenery and people-watching.

We were looking for Hemingway's monument and thought we had found it .....

..... only to discover, on closer inspection, that what we were looking at was a bust in honour of a local dignatory! Further along the road we reached the monument - a bronze bust made from melted-down brass boat fittings donated by his fishermen friends after his death.

2. Rural Cuba:

We were driven to the agricultural region of the Valle de Yumuri, stretching westwards from the city of Matanzas into the Mayabeque province. The valley has remained largely untouched by tourism, with tiny villages few and far between. While the Rough Guide waxes lyrical about its 'rolling pastures', 'small forests' and 'plots of banana, maize, tobacco and other plants', we must have taken the wrong route as we found the half-day trip very disappointing and with little of value to see. In fact we felt that Saga had included it only to make good their commitment to 4 excursions included in the total price. It wasn't helped by a bus with missing seat belts and a guide who seemed to know very little about the area despite taking trips there every week. 

That said, the excursion got off to a good start with a visit to Ranchon Gaviota where we had a complimentary Cuban cocktail. 

after being greeted by the manager

  

 There was time to have a look around the reconstructions of a rural dwelling......

Who IS that lurking around the corner?

...... though the eclectic mix of artefacts on display made it difficult to determine what era they were meant to depict.

There was also time to have a look around the grounds.

Then back into the bus to a 'nearby farmhouse' (Saga information). The guide was at pains to tell us we were going to a privately -owned working farm, but as soon as we turned into the driveway it was apparent that what we were actually being taken to was a 'model farm' Stalinist-style: a Disney-esque pastiche of what an ideal Cuban farm should be. When pressed, our guide admitted that the 'farm' was in fact owned and run by a State-owned travel agency, and was primarily used as a base for Jeep Safaris. Was this 'The promise of learning about rural farming traditions which have barely changed over the years'? Did they mean  the man standing next to a cow holding its tether??

There was almost nothing to see here in the 10 minutes we were left to explore, so we gratefully boarded the bus again for the very short hop to a series of sheds where sugar cane was being squeezed and added to the rum we were at liberty to buy.