Visiting a humidor manufactury

Tobacco is very important in Cuba, especially in the north. Not only you find big tobacco patches and cigar manufactories, you can also find workshops, where they build those boxes for storing cigars in optimal conditions, with regard on humidity and temperature. All the cigar and humidor factories are operated by the government. All? No, a few manufactories are already private owned and operated by tobacco farmers (producing cigars) and carpenters (making humidors).

You can visit both, cigar and humidor factories and see people assembling cigars respectively cutting the wood for humidors. But, as in all government operated factories a visitor is forbidden to bring any kind of bag (even not a lady’s handbag) or a camera. On the other hand, when visiting a tobacco farmer or a craftsman, you can ask for permission, as I did.

In case, you think of a humidor of being a simple box made of cheap woods or card box to sell the cigars, so you are wrong. Storing cigars and keep them in good shape is really complicated and need a lot of specific knowledge.

Here you can see, some of the wonderful humidors. They are made of wood from cedar trees, which is best for keeping the right humidity inside the box. More luxurious boxes even have hygrometer for metering the humidity inside the box. In case the humidity is too high, the cigars would begin fouling. Is it too low, they’d drying out. Both conditions are bad, if you want to smoke them.

In the gallery you can not only see many more humidors, you can also have a look inside the workshop.

Have fun and take care!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Walking through the jungle

Here are some photos taken in the forest and on the hills. While walking uphill we met a man coming down from collecting fruits in the forest. It’s a Guanábana (Annona muricata). It grows wild and the fruits are collected for their private use. A fruit can wight up to 4 kilos and tastes sour – sweet. Interesting, unusual, but ok. You can eat the soft, whitely fruit or drink it as a juice. But avoid to eat the poisonous black pits.

I’d recommend to hire a local guide to get the interesting plants explained. There is so much to see and you’d miss it, when you don’t have a guide pointing your eyes on it. We had a very talented local guide. Actually he was able to guide this tour completely in excellent German.  He even knew the German names of the plants and the animals.

Enjoy!

Maybe you have a look on the past posts on Cuba here in my blog, or posts on any other topic.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

games children play

My last two posts were focused on kids. Today I focus on kids again.

We saw several kids playing in the streets of the cuban cities and I was wondering, what kind of games they’d play. It seems to me, kids all over the world are playing the same kinds of games: football (soccer), throwing cards, marbles, hide and seek, jumping the rope, riding a bike, playing with animals (dogs, cats, goats, donkeys), catch-me or

Plaza de la Revolución José Martí

This huge square is biggest square of Cuba and it is used for big political events. According to Wikipedia it is 72.000 square meters big.

The square is dominated by the José Martí Memorial. He was one of leaders of the first revolution against Spain back in 1895 and is now a national hero.

The other buildings, decorated with Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos which

Let the music play

When thinking about Cuba, what do you think first? Rum? Cigars? Tabaco? Music? Or old cars?

To shorten it: I found all of this.

Music is everywhere. In hotel  lobbys, restaurants and in the streets are people playing music. Usually bands with more than 2 and  up to 10 members. Here in Germany music in restaurants is usually played by CD and street musicians are playing alone. But in Cuba there were usually bands playing music.

Many of them also try to sell their own CDs. Some CD are homemade, using a CD burner, others are made professional. The price