Ernest Hemingway has cult status in Cuba, where he lived for 20 years. His work is required reading in schools throughout the island, and his books continue to top best-seller lists among Cuba’s adults. The places he lived, the bars where he drank and even the places he launched his boat to go fishing are marked with plaques and open for tours. A photo of Hemingway with Fidel Castro is seen in the most unlikely of places. The two men met only once, when Hemingway presented a sports fishing trophy to Castro in 1960. Now that Americans can go to Cuba on organized people-to-people tours, most visitors want a Hemingway encounter. Our group’s guided walk down Obispo Street began at Floridita, one of the bars where he spent lots of time. A double frozen daiquiri without sugar was his favorite drink, as noted in several of his novels, and many visitors order one when they come to pay homage at the overly air-conditioned bar. A bronze statue of Hemingway, leaning on his left elbow, is in the corner seat where he preferred to sit. Many pose for photos with ‘Papa,’ as he was affectionately called. Obispo is a pedestrian street running between Central Park, opposite our Inglaterra Hotel, to Plaza de Armas, the oldest of four central Havana plazas. It’s a shopping street filled with boutiques, shops and art galleries and frequented mostly by visitors and those hoping to sell to them. A block before reaching the plaza, you reach the pink Hotel Ambos Mundos, which dates to 1925. A pianist played in the lobby, where numerous photos of Hemingway were displayed above the tour desk. A small, old-fashioned two-person elevator took us to the rooftop, although some preferred instead to climb the six flights. After enjoying iced coffee and the view from the rooftop, we descended one floor to visit Room 511, a corner room where Hemingway lived on and off between 1932 and 1939. ‘This room was his first home in Cuba,’ the guide told us. ‘He chose the room because from its window he could see the direction of the wind for fishing.’ The modest hotel room is furnished much as he left it, with dozens of magazines in both English and Spanish. He was known for surrounding himself with magazines and some are there, including a Life magazine from 1952 with his portrait on the cover. His Corona typewriter sits in the middle of room where the guide told us he began ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’ In ‘Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir,’ Hemingway told his friend and biographer A.E. Hotchner he preferred to write standing up ‘because you have more vitality on your feet.’ He also said he wrote description in longhand ‘because that’s the hardest for me and you’re closer to the paper when you work by hand.’ He told Hotchner he used the typewriter for dialogue ‘because people speak like typewriter words.’ READ:
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Hemingway and his third wife, Martha, later rented a one-story Spanish colonial house on a breezy 20-acre hilltop in the Havana suburb of San Francisco de Paula. When his first royalty check arrived from ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ they bought the house in 1940. Hemingway spent many happy years there among his cats, animal trophies from African safaris, paintings by Joan Miro and Paul Klee, bullfight photos, guns, magazines and more than 9,000 books. In that house, which they called Finca Vigia, he wrote ‘A Moveable Feast,’ ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ and ‘Across the River and Into the Trees.’ The house plays a major role in his ‘Islands in the Stream,’ a book he wrote there that was finished by his fourth wife, Mary, and published in 1970 after his death. In August 1961, just a month after Hemingway took his own life in Idaho, Mary was forced to sign over the house and its contents to the Castro government. Finca Vigia sat empty, ravaged by tropical decay for years until a five-year, $1 million restoration was completed in 2009. A steady stream of visitors now comes up the long driveway lined with mango and jacaranda trees to climb the steps to Finca Vigia and ring the bell to the left of the front door. It appears as if Hemingway still could be there, perhaps in another room, out of sight. His magazines and books are there along with the animal heads and paintings. Visitors cannot enter the house but must content themselves with peering through the windows, Pilar, his 38-foot wooden cabin cruiser, is in back beyond the empty swimming pool beneath a shelter over the former tennis courts. Pilar was also the nickname for his second wife, Pauline, and a major character in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ Hemingway often fished the Cuban waters, and he and the boat put sport fishing on the map. In 1942 he proposed to the Cuban government he would outfit Pilar to hunt for Nazi submarines off the cays on the island’s north coast. He would tell people he was collecting specimens for the Museum of Natural History. He had a friend who was the head of Naval Intelligence for Central America and got the plan approved. And for two years he and the boat’s captain patrolled the cays. The captain was the model for Antonio in ‘Islands in the Stream,’ which chronicled many episodes in the author’s life. Not far from where the boat Pilar is displayed, surrounded by elevated wooden walkways so visitors can look into its cockpit, are the graves of some of Hemingway’s beloved cats. Each has a tiny gravestone – a testimony to their importance in the author’s life. In ‘Islands in the Stream’ he often writes about his cats, Boise, Willy, Goats, Furhouse, Littless and Friendless’s Brother. Boise was his favorite, and when he was away at his house in Key West, Florida, he often would telephone to learn about Boise’s health. Here, in the character of Thomas Hudson, the ‘Islands in the Stream’ protagonist, Hemingway writes about their relationship to catnip: ‘The cats were very odd about catnip. Boise, Willy Goats, Friendless’s Brother, Littless, Furhouse and Taskforce were all addicts. Princessa, which was the name the servants had given Baby, the blue Persian, would never touch catnip; neither would Uncle Wolfie. With Uncle Wolfie, who was as stupid as he was beautiful, it could have been stupidity or insularity. Uncle Wolfie would never try anything new and would sniff cautiously at any new food until the other cats had taken it all and he was left with nothing. But Princessa, who was the grandmother of all the cats and was intelligent, delicate, high principled, aristocractic and most loving, was afraid of the odor of catnip and fled from it as though it was a vice.’ His wife, Mary, seeking to get as many as 30 cats out of Finca Vigia and provide Hemingway a private place to write away from the bustle of the household, had a tower built next to the house. The cats used it, but the author didn’t, preferring instead to write while standing up on a portable typewriter atop his bedroom bookcase. Today the tower’s top floor can be reached by visitors via a winding staircase on its outside. The breezy top room has more Hemingway artifacts, including a painting of the author in Africa with cats he’s just taken as trophies. Visitors cannot enter the room, but a guide inside kindly offers to shoot photos for them. Near the visitor parking area for Finca Vigia, guarapo, or freshly squeezed sugar cane, is made for a nearby guaraperia where a Hemingway-inspired drink that also uses fresh squeezed pineapple is served. A sign says Hemingway tasted pineapple for the first time here and shows a photo of him with a drink made from it. The drink is available to purchase at the guaraperia stand. Travelers’ checks
People-to-people tours to Cuba can be arranged through many tour operators holding a license from the Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control. They include well-known tour operators such as National Geographic, Roads Scholar, Tauck Tours and Insight Travel and are framed around subjects such as architecture, art, birding, music and culinary. Visits to places associated with Ernest Hemingway, including his longtime home Finca Vigia, are part of many tours. I traveled with Delaware-based
: 302-658-2900. It has Cuba tours with openings in October and one to see in the New Year. There are several travel guides available to research travel to Cuba, but you’ll have limited opportunities to do things independently on the people-to-people itinerary, so it’s my recommendation that you research your trip closely, ask questions and choose one that best suits you. Tour companies, which provide visitors with a Cuban visa, are audited by the U.S. Department of Treasury to make sure they live up to what they promise. Realize that while in Cuba you will be without the use of credit or debit cards, cellphones and Internet for much of your stay, so plan accordingly. Wear sturdy shoes because you’ll be doing a lot of walking on cobblestones and uneven surfaces.
