Caught by the spell of his literary excellence, many travellers seek out the places where the American writer Ernest Hemingway chose to rest in Cuba or where his imprint is still present.
The storyteller was so fond of spending time in the West Indian nation that some consider him to be as much a Cuban as an American. This statement is supported by the places where the Nobel Prize winner left his mark in the so-called Caribbean Cayman, where he lived for more than 20 years.
In Cuba, he met with his friends, talked, drank and wrote the Bronze God of American Literature, and also selected sea currents for fishing or in pursuit of German submarines.
For these reasons, Hemingway is a man of Cuban tourism, as he was considered during his lifetime, and nowadays he is still present as an adventurer or as a simple human being capable of choosing the best places.
Born on 21 July 1899 in Oak Park, Chicago, he arrived for the first time in Cuba on 1 April 1928, at 22:50 local time, on a cloudy night with a misty horizon, as the notes of the time state.
Specialists affirm that he arrived on the British-flagged steamship Orita, as recorded in the books of the Morro Castle, the most emblematic fortress of Havana, the capital.
He arrived accompanied by his second wife, Pauline Pfaiffer, on a voyage from France to Key West, with a stopover in Havana. She was five months pregnant. A year later, the young reporter went to Cuban waters on the boat Anita to fish for needlefish. From these encounters, he grew to love Cuba dearly.
However, other authors consider that his interest in Cuba consisted in the attraction of a stormy woman, named Jane Mason. For this version, it was 1929 when the American multimillionaire George Grant Mason – a representative of Pan American Airways – moved to the Cuban capital with his wife, a turbulent lady who was bored.
Within range of the woman was Hemingway (29), who fell for her charms. During his first visits, he stayed at the Ambos Mundos hotel in the old part of the capital, in room 511, which today is displayed like a relic, although it lacks truly historical objects.
From there, the writer enjoyed a fairly complete picture of the city and finished some of his texts. From 1929 to 1936, Hemingway participated in an active life in Havana, which made him a member of bars such as El Floridita, a place where he took refuge and even coined a drink with his name.
It was the Papa Doble or Hemingway Special, a variant of the Daiquiri cocktail, based on Cuban white rum, lemon, mint and sugar, but the writer did away with the sugar and turned his hand to alcohol.
He drank up to 12 large glasses of these concoctions and took a couple of them with him on the road back to his Finca Vigía, a mansion on the heights of San Francisco de Paula, rented in 1939 by his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, and which he bought in 1940.
In that country residence, with a marvellous view, he would discard the tower his wife had built for him to write, preferring to do so standing up in his room. All his things are there just as they were when he lived in the house, now the Hemingway Museum.
Relatively close to the site is Cojímar, a fishing village in the eastern part of the island, where his yacht Pilar docked, and where his boss Gregorio Fuentes (1897-2002) lived for a long time (up to 104 years). There is a restaurant there, La Terraza, which specialises in seafood and fish, which the writer was fond of eating.
In 1930, Hemingway sailed along Cuba’s north-central coastline, visiting the Guillermo, Coco and Romano keys and the Maternillos lighthouse. He also visited Camagüey, in the eastern region, especially villages such as Palm City, a curious town founded by Germans, according to some researchers, including the writer Enrique Cirules (1938-2016).
It was during those years that the mythical Hemingway settled in Cuba in 1940. He then travelled to Cayo Confites and Cayo Lobo, after the sinking of two American ships by German submarines.
He then began his adventure in search of these Nazi ships, but never fought against any of them (it seems that he only sighted one German U-boat on the surface, but when he set out to attack it, it left).
On such voyages, he was captivated by the beauty of these places; today, Cayo Coco, in the province of Ciego de Avila, is one of the country’s most important centres of tourist development.
This 370-square-kilometre islet, with an airport and 22 kilometres of pristine beaches, is a paradisiacal setting for travellers. There are several luxury hotels between Coco and Guillermo.
To the far west, in the north of the province of Pinar del Río, lies Cayo Mégano de Casiguas, baptised by Hemingway as Paradise, and that name stuck. He would go there to rest, be taken there by his boss Gregorio on the Pilar, disembark by boat and then read, sleep or make love to Mary Welsh, his fourth and last wife.
Another important event in Hemingway’s career in Cuba includes the Hatuey brewery party room in the capital, where on 13 August 1956 the novelist presented the Cubans with his Nobel Prize for Literature medal (1954), according to Cuban journalist Fernando G. Campoamor (1914-2001).
More than 20 cultural institutions of the time joined in the celebration, but Hemingway made his fishermen friends from Cojímar sit in the chair, considering them the best people in Cuba. Today, this valuable object is housed in the Archbishopric of eastern Santiago de Cuba.
In fact, the writer donated the award to the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba, whose altar is in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, because she is – in turn – the patron saint of the fishermen, his dearest friends. The medal was kept in the basilica of El Cobre, but was later transferred to the Archbishopric after a failed theft attempt.
One of the places Hemingway passed through, albeit less frequently, was the Barlovento dock, on the western outskirts of the capital, where today the country’s most important marina, Marina Hemingway, is located.
There are more than 100 berths with live-aboards, i.e. with water and electricity for yachts, and 800 spaces for mooring boats.
Every year since 1950, during the writer’s lifetime, this facility has organised a marlin fishing tournament, the oldest of its kind in the world. In the 1960s, Hemingway met for the only time with the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro (1926-2016), where today the Papa’s Restaurant is located.
A tourist complex of hotels, nautical and recreational services now offers a refined gastronomy and hotels in accordance with the sailors who fill the canals of the place for months on end.