Westward Ho!

This day we awoke, had breakfast on the terrace and boarded the bus for the western end of Cuba, Pinar del Rio and Vinales. I must remark that thus far the roads in Cuba have been excellent to travel on and we were not certain what we would encounter this day. We anticipated a long drive of at least three hours and it was. Along the way we stopped at one of the many service centres on the highway to purchase some water. We thought it wise to send Sergio in..

Our Cuban guide had a great laugh when the Mexican guy came back with Mexican water…CORONA!!! We’re in Cuba, Sergio. Where’s the Bucanero? Nevertheless, thirst quenched (for some of us) we travelled on through the Cuban countryside , amazed at how green it was compared to Yucatan!

As we neared Pinar del Rio, it started to drizzle, so we merely drove through the town. There were some amazing buildings , like the Palacio de Guasch – built in 1909 for a wealthy physician it combines Moorish arches, Gothic spires and Baroque elements.

Continuing our trip we headed back towards Vinales, one of the main tobacco farming areas of Western Cuba. Eventually, we stopped at Mirador de los Jazmines which offers a spectacular vista of the Valley and its famous ‘mogotes‘.

Cuba was once covered by limestone (“karst”). Much of this limestone has eroded away, leaving mountains with steep sides and rounded, jungly tops. The mountains are called mogotes, which means “haystacks.” Many mogotes have caves. Several caves are developed for tourists to visit. The view from the lookout was spectacular.

Yes, indeed, there were the expected vendors selling you all kinds of souvenirs. Hildi and Francois decided to opt for  resting their feet! I was going to say and that’s no bull, BUT IT IS!!!

Ride’em cowfolk! Guess that should be bullfolk! Anyways, time for lunch! After another short ride and a stop at the infamous Prehistoric Mural, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwELarNwuXI, we arrived at Palenque de los Cimarrones. Que sorpresa! After a refreshing local drink, we walked through the caves to our waiting restaurant. But, not without trepidation…that’s a pretty small entrance for us tall Canadians, eh?

On the other side, the natives were there to welcome us – FYI…”Cimarrones” refers to runaway slaves who used to hide in these caves!

On our way back to Havana after lunch we visited one of the many tobacco farms…

Totally exhausted, we made a few purchases and headed towards Havana and our hotel. Later that night a few of us ventured out to Sloppy Joe’s bar for a light meal and mojitos, of course!

Buenos dias amigos!

With a 9 a.m. departure time for our first walking/bus tour we were all up early for breakfast on the rooftop terrace. Setting out on time, we were forced to stop at the first bank we could find to exchange those pesky Mexican pesos into Cuban Convertible Pesos. FYI…a CUC just happens to be the equivalent of $1 USD! With almost everyone having to exchange money we were in line for quite some time…

Having accomplished this gargantuan task we boarded our bus and set up for a tour through Havana, stopping first at the Museo de Revolucion – former home of Fulgencio Batista. For more info on Batista, check the following link –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista

Here’s a short tour of the Museo from YouTube –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjFSWLrLvOQ

We continued by bus to Real Fortza Castle on the bay…visiting a cigar store which boasts the longest cigar ever made and listed in Guinness Book of Records…

The longest cigar measured 81.80 m (268 ft 4 in) and was made by Jose Castelar Cueto (Cuba) at the La Triada shop at Parque Morro-Cabaña in Havanna, Cuba, on 3 May 2011.

Cueto started to make the cigar on 25 April 2011, but only finished in the evening of 2 May. The cigar was officially measured on the following day.

By this time we were burned out after that long stop at the bank and headed to Plaza Catedral, which just happened to be located near the famous La Bodeguita del Medio….you know, the place where Hemingway drank mojitos!!!

Following lunch and some wonderful Cuban music, we began our walk back to our hotel…..very slowly! More about the various plazas in the next blog post…. anyone for another mojito?

Partagás Cigars…

Okay ladies you might want to skip this one…but then again one should not assume! Our friend, Mary in Puerto Vallarta loves her occasional cigar….

Partagás is among the oldest extant brands of cigars, established in Havana in 1845. The name is used today by two independent and competing entities, one produced on the island of Cuba for Habanos SA, the Cuban state-owned tobacco company; the other, containing no Cuban tobacco, produced in the Dominican Republic for the General Cigar Company, a subsidiary of Swedish Match.

The Catalan Don Jaume Partagás i Ravell (Arenys de Mar, 1816 – Vuelta abajo, Cuba, 1864) son of Jaume Partagás (Taylor) and Theresa Ravell. He migrated to Cuba and founded with the help of a Lloret de Mar businessman, Joan Conill, a small tobacco factory in Havana in 1827, before establishing his own factory, Real Fábricas de Tabaco Partagás in 1845, on 60 Industria Street in Havana, one of the largest of its time. The name, which translates as “Partagás Royal Tobacco Factory,” was supposedly chosen because of Don Jaume’s status as cigar supplier to various European and Asian nobility. Don Jaume owned many of the best plantations in the Vuelta Abajo tobacco-growing region of Cuba; being able to choose from among the finest tobaccos on the island made the brand incredibly successful. Don Jaume is also believed to have experimented with various methods of fermenting and aging tobacco and is legendarily credited with hiring the first lector to read to and entertain the cigar rollers as they worked.

Don Jaume was murdered (supposedly by a jealous rival he’d been vying with in one of his love affairs) on one of his plantations in either 1864 or 1868 and his son Josep Partagás took over the business. Later the factory and brand were sold to banker José A. Bance, who in turn sold to Cifuentes, Fernández y Cía in 1900. In 1916, Don José Fernández apparently left the firm and Ramón Cifuentes Llano joined with Francisco Pego Pita to form Cifuentes, Pego y Cía. In 1927, it acquired the rights to the Ramón Allones brand; at some unknown point the factory began to produce a brand in its own name, Cifuentes.

Ramon Cifuentes died in 1938 and Pego in 1940, leaving the Cifuentes family solely in control of the increasingly prestigious factory and brand, which renamed the company Cifuentes y Cía. In 1954, the Cifuentes family acquired the Bolívar and La Gloria Cubana brands from José F. Rocha and moved their production to the Cifuentes factory. By 1958 it was second only to the H. Upmann company in exporting Cuban cigars, accounting for over a quarter of all exported tobacco goods.

Before and after the Cuban Revolution, the authentic Cuban-produced Partagás has been one of the most revered and highest-selling cigars in the world. By the middle 1990s it remained the second leading selling Cuban brand, following Montecristo, with annual sales of approximately 10 million cigars.

The old Partagás Factory in Havana, since renamed “Francisco Pérez Germán”, is still responsible for much of the annual production of the Partagás brand. It has proven a very popular tourist destination for cigar smokers vacationing in Cuba.

In 2002, Altadis bought a controlling share in the Cuban government-owned cigar distributor, Habanos SA, and instituted a number of changes in cigar production. Among them was gradually turning the various brands of Cuban cigars to either all-handmade or all-machine-made lines, reducing the number of redundant sizes within a brand, and eliminating many low-selling cigars. Partagás, which has historically produced a variety of handmade and machine-made or machine-finished cigars, had several of its vitolas cut from production, much to the dismay of connoisseurs worldwide.

Since the introduction of the Edición Limitada annual releases, Partagás has produced a special size almost every year: the Pirámide in 2000, the Serie D No. 3 in 2001, the Serie D No. 2 in 2003, the Serie D No. 1 in 2004, a reissue of the Serie D No. 3 in 2006, and the Serie D No. 5 in 2008. In 2005, Partagás introduced a pyramid, the Serie P No. 2, which has proven highly popular with cigar connoisseurs.

Partagás also offers two machine-made cigarillos (the Mini and the Club) and a brand of cigarettes.

Check out this YouTube of an acquaintance in Puerto Vallarta making a single cigar for our friends, Bruce and Mary –

▶ Cigar Making at El Gato Gordo – YouTube

More later on the tobacco growing region of Vinales…