2011/03 – Cuba 2011 – Viñales Vuelta Abajo – Trinidad

11 Mar

Jimmy at Pancho Cuba

At Pancho Cuba

With Pancho Cuba

With Pancho Cuba

Viñales – Vuelta Abajo – Trinidad

We suffered through yet another breakfast disaster at Los Jazmines ( no bread the manager shrugged) but the hard boiled eggs were good.

Again, a café con leche and a Charlotte at the bar would be a much better solution.

We passed Pinar del Rio where, as every year, the book fair was the main attraction and headed out to the Vuelta Abajo, the area between this provincial capital, San Juan y Martinez and San Luis. The best area in the world for tobacco.
We passed the Hoyo de Monterrey vega and continued.

In San Juan y Martinez we visited the tobacco grower we consider to be possibly the best in the area, Sr Francisco Milian, aka “Pancho Cuba”.

A quiet and shy man in his mid-sixties, he exudes the aura of a farmer, a devoted farmer who works his fields with passion and who lives with and by nature.

He lacks the aura and the myth of Don Alejandro Robaina, but he shares the tobacco heart & soul and has the passionate vocation for the plant and its wellbeing in his DNA.

What a difference from last year when rain, storms and wind shear destroyed a part of his crop and where I took my, sadly, best picture of the trip, showing the sadness of a guajiro over the loss of plants.

This year the crop is exuberantly green, thick, beefy, full of sap, full of energy. And what we see in the curing barns is absolute joy. Big, juicy leaves of tobacco drying in the barns, we climb the curing sticks and inhale the deep green, hydrophilic aroma.

We learn more in the few hours we stay with Pancho than we ever will. Always a pleasure to be back.

Another plantation we visited is Vegas Robaina in Cuchillas de Barbacoa – San Luis.

I wanted to go back for nostalgic reasons after having visited it all of the last 6 years. And to offer a prayer for Don Alejandro at the farms Virgen del Tabaco altar.

The grand man’s successor is very busy, Japanese tv crews were interviewing him, visitors hung around. But he had some spare minutes for us and offered us a coffee.

I mentioned the new Paladar that he is supposed to have opened and he confirmed it, even called for a reservations, although we will be the first guests there, it being soft opened that day.

He is somewhat changed, more serious now. He bemoans the hard work to keep the farm going with all the groups, visitors coming in and is surprised that people will now travel all the way from Havana to have his signature on a box.
Reality seems to be setting in.

I asked him about a claim by a merchant about selling Robaina farm cigars and Padrinos, with the permission of Don Alejandro and his own and even shipping them from – of all places – the USA. I have a print-out of his original claim. He swallows hard, complains that he has not given anyone permission to market his name or cigars and that it must be a joke as his name is spelled wrongly. He asks me to keep the print-out so he can dispute the claim. I give it to him.

I hope the legend and name of his grand-father will continue to shine as it has in the last decades.

Later I would meet Reynaldo at Casa del Habano Hostal Conde de Villanueva in Havana who is also mentioned by this merchant and he was clearly more pissed off and straight forward. He’s heard about those claims and had fired off a mail to stop the claims. He had sold custom rolled sticks to the guy as to many other customers, but not for commercial re-sale.

We leave Hirochi to his daily routine and visit his Paladar El Pinar, down by the main road, about 2 kms away from the Vega.

The food is once again THE best, as the cook is the cook from Vegas Robaina who would cook for the visitors up there.

Best Moros y Cristianos, Malanga, Pork, Chicken and Salad in Cuba – what else do you need besides a cold Cristal and an aged Rum with a cortado while puffing on your cigar ??

We spend almost two hours there and enjoy the lunch to reminisce about how life goes on and things change and we are indeed the first patrons.

Around 4 pm we hit the highway out of Pinar del Rio headed for Havana and 2 hrs later on we pass the city and are on the straight-as-an-arrow pista to Cienfuegos.

Short stop at a petrol-station-cum-disco before we leave the pista after Central Australia and head for Cienfuegos.

It should be easy and not a problem, but we have to ask directions every 5 to 10 minutes.

There are no reliable road signs, left means right and right means left-left. We are lost although there is still light and all seems navigable.

We pass Cienfuegos and look out for the Trinidad road – there are a few ways to get there, by the sea, over and around the Sierra del Escambray, but we seem to be thoroughly lost.
At a crossing it says Trinidad left – another van shudders to a stop next to us, a window is opened and the driver simply points right and yells : Siganme.

And follow him we did, for 85 kilometers of winding, narrow road in the dark at speeds up to a 120 km/h. We see his emergency lights blink in the distance and wonder what he is warning us about – later we learn that there are many loose cows on the road.

We would drive the same road in sunny daylight a few days later and wonder how the hell we managed to survive the ride without a scratch.

Caballo Loco or “crazy horse” as we called him would patiently wait for us, and even escort us right to the plaza in Trinidad where our Iberostar Hotel was located. He regrettably declined to have a beer with us – he had to ride back to Havana.

I will not describe the police check that we had to endure before entering Trinidad – let it just be known that it was a very denigrating piece of arbitrary discrimination by bored and vicious cops who thought they could milk us of some cookies before they found out that they had stopped the wrong guys.

We were royally pissed off by their mean spirited treatment and after a very “frank and open” confrontation they let us go and continued with their meager dinner hoping their next catch would be a more docile fish..

It was dark and we were in need of a few cold beers, but we could feel the magic of Trinidad.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad,_Cuba

Jimmy and I had a few cold ones outside at a bar before retiring to the Hotel.

A Hotel that would be the best, friendliest, service-oriented, that had the most beautiful rooms and terraces overlooking the plaza and the best breakfast and service I have ever encountered in Cuba.

That night sleep was very profound.

Nino