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Tobacco is grown in many tropical countries and cigars are manufactured all over the world but "Cuban" and "Havana" are universally recognised as the ultimate labels of quality for cigars. Here is what a tobacco field looks like through the window of a moving bus.
Avenida Marti is the main street of Piñar del Rio, the capital of Piñar del Rio province that produces 80% of Cuba's tobacco. Almost all of Cuba's cigars are however manufactured in Havana, hence the label that has become as synonymous with the product as "Frigidaire" became interchangeable with "refrigerator".
Piñar, as it is commonly called, is a small town of about 150 000 people, 190 kms west of Havana. The "Catedral de San Rosendo" is one of its distinguishing landmarks.
Another landmark is this pleasant paseo on the nearby Avenida Colón.
The pace of life is relaxed here and the people appear to be much happier than in Havana. The people I met in the street talked freely about their every day life, about their income and the cost of living and about their hopes for their children. All those I met were proud of the progress accomplished since the revolution and none complained like some I met in Havana and Santiago.
Food is cheap in Cuba, this street vendor is privately selling tomatoes for 12 US cents a pound, much more than the subsidised price of the state stores.
Wages are low in Cuba but food prices are correspondingly low, education and health services are free and rents are almost free.
The peso economy was pretty well in equilibrium and people were content to live within their means until tourism introduced a new dollar economy that upset everything.
State stores are not very attractive but they do offer the basic necessities at incredibly low subsidised prices. Quantities per customer are rationed to prevent abuse but these stores ensure that nobody goes to bed hungry, even the poorest field laborer.
Piñar del Rio has its tourist hotel, the Piñar del Rio Hotel, but the corrupting influence of tourism is not as evident in the smaller towns as it is in Havana and Santiago.
After Piñar, I went back to Havana for another week before crossing the island to Santiago with stops in Trinidad and Camagüey.
Tobacco is important to Cuba but cane is the mainstay of the Cuban economy. It's the loss of the premium priced soviet market for Cuban sugar that initiated the economic crisis that hit the country in the early '90's but it's the US embargo that amplified it and that forced Cuba to resort to tourism to survive.
Trinidad is a jewel! It is one of the most beautiful little towns I have seen, and I have seen many! No wonder that UNESCO rates it as a World Heritage Site!
This 50 000 person town is also one of Cuba's oldest, having been founded in 1514, almost 4 centuries ago!
Life is tranquil in Trinidad on a Sunday afternoon.
Trinidad is delightful and the people are still friendly with strangers in spite of the growing number of tourists that come here.
In some ways, Trinidad reminds me of Antigua de Guatemala which is also rated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Antigua is also beautiful but it hosts three dozen Spanish language schools and is full of tourists learning Spanish (mostly American). Actually it is not a very good place to learn Spanish because everyone speaks English in all the bars and restaurants at night.
The people living here might make a little more money if Trinidad had three dozen Spanish schools and as many restaurants and bars like Antigua but I feel that they would lose some of the quality of life that is evident here.
Isn't this curved street in the old part of town lovely?
By now, you might wonder how I, a tourist, can be so biased against tourism. I recognise my bias but only against excessive tourism. I think that a little tourism can be beneficial for a country because it brings in hard currency and opens the minds of the local people to values other than traditional.
In my opinion however, there is a level of touristic saturation over which these benefits begin to be overshadowed by negative aspects that I have observed in many places around the world.
I know this is calle Piro Guinart because of the belfry of what is now the "Museo Nacional de la Lucha Contra Bandidos".
The negative aspects of excessive tourism first hit the visiting foreigner who, for the local host, is no longer "an interesting individual from which something might be learned" but who becomes "just another walking bank to be relieved of his excess cash the most efficiently possible".
The presence of too many tourists and an excessive dependency on their spending can also be harmful to the culture and social organisation of the local people. I found this to be particularly true in some places where crime and prostitution are directly related to the presence of tourists and devised an "Index of Touristic Saturation" (ITS) in an attempt to measure the importance of the touristic influence in various countries.
It was interesting to discover that the Caribbean islands garnered 13 of the 20 highest scores on this index confirming my impression that they have become the region the most hard hit by tourism in the world. Cuba rates a low index of 0.01 like Canada but tourism (and prostitution), is growing very fast in Cuba and nobody knows where the index will stand in a decade if the present development priorities of the Cuban government do not change. Will Cuba regain the title of being "the playground of the Americas" it had under Batista?
This is not a cathedral, it is only the "Iglesia Parroquial de la Santissima Familia" in front of the Plaza Major in the oldest part of Trinidad.
The dominant Catholic religion was out of favour during the past forty odd years. That allowed the resurgence of the previously persecuted "Santeria" religion practised by slaves to disguise their ancient African beliefs behind a facade of Christian elements. It is now practised openly, albeit by few people.
I happened to walk into a place of Santeria worship not far from the Plaza major and took the following photos of the Santeria priest with a black virgin and of a Santeria saint or goddess. He was quite candid with me in claiming that being a Santeria priest was a better profession than being a doctor...
This is the city hall. I happened to be in Trinidad on December 28th so I enjoyed the Liberation Day fiesta with the happy local population.
Everybody had a bottle of rum and, as far as I could tell, the point of the exercise was to share it with as many as possible so as to have to get another one. It got to be a great party in the evening.
This group of school children were patiently waiting for their turn to sing t heir bit on a stage set-up next to Parque Cespedes.
Of course there was a lot of very loud music everywhere. On the other side of the park a bunch of barely older preteen kids were working hard at looking older and sexy as they danced under the amused gaze of the bystanders.
The whole town was a big party and everyone got happier and happier as the day wore on and the empties piled up.
There were pork sandwich stands almost at every corner so nobody went hungry. Roast pork, by the way, is the Cuban's favourite feast.
Roast pork is such a favourite that it's only natural for the Cubans to think that it must have been a turn-on for Christ as well, even though he was a Jew.
I had a great time in Trinidad and I recommend that you rush over to see it before the locals get so jaded from seeing too many tourists that they won't take time to have meaningful conversations with strangers.
I stayed with a delightful young couple, Javier Guerrero, a communist youth militant and his wife Madelin Maceiro, an economist who quit her job because she could make many times more money by receiving tourists in her home. I learned a lot about corruption of low level bureaucrats and the pilferage in state factories that feeds the black market.
