Today we headed out of Havana firstly to the botanical
gardens, which are the largest in the world.
After a walk through the cactus house and then the tropical house, we
drove around the rest of the place in our bus with a very knowledgeable guide (botanist)
explaining the various regions which the gardens were divided into and what
trees we were looking at. Very enjoyable
but not enough flowers for my liking.
After that we went on to see Ernest Hemingway’s house which
is on the outskirts of Havana and where he wrote The Old Man and The Sea. I
believe when he bought it in the 1940s it was a quiet but smart area but now it
isn’t particularly prestigious. You
cannot go into the house itself so you just have to look through the open
windows but it’s been kept beautifully and is apparently authentic to the
time.
The pool where Ava Gardner
famously swam naked is empty and his fishing boat “Pilar” has been moved here
from where she was moored in nearby Cojimar.
Ian read The Old Man and The Sea, a relatively short story, in a couple of hours and thoroughly enjoyed it. The only work I've read is For Whom The Bell Tolls set during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) as I had to do it for English Literature 'O' Level.
He was by all accounts quite a character; hard drinking, had several wives and numerous affairs and was, like so many other highly intelligent people, a manic depressive (bipolar) - he committed suicide aged 61. There were numerous pictures of him around the house which showed a very handsome, charismatic man and I particularly liked this Warholesque image.
An interesting anecdote: one chap on the tour told us his sister was
Hemingway’s secretary when he lived in Kenya and she typed the manuscript for The Snows of Kilimanjaro. She apparently
put in a third piece of carbon paper and made a copy for herself, selling it
many years later at auction and getting enough to buy her flat outright (don’t
know where she lives, so I don’t really know how much he was alluding to).
After that we drove to Cojimar where the boat was originally
moored and had a very nice cocktail, but the little town was a bit of a
dump. Looking over the sea wall we saw
about 20 dead birds, one of which we think was a pelican with its stomach
hanging out clearly showing it was full of plastic bags - BAN THE PLASTIC BAG
NOW!!!!! Being a Saturday no one was at
work and there were lots of people just hanging around the promenade, with BBQs
and various stalls selling plastic tat.
I think Ian felt a bit intimidated but I felt everyone was very friendly
and they didn’t mind me snapping away. I
guess being able to speak even my poor Spanish is appreciated.
With the only decent restaurant being full we
then whizzed back to Havana Old Town for lunch, for us it was just a baguette
but we sat on an upstairs balcony in Plaza Vieja watching the world go by and
chatting to a lovely Australian lady who’d just arrived for a month and had
been everywhere in the world, as is so often the case.