Trip to Cuba and New Orleans
Mike and Judy Henderson
January 25 to February 8, 2016
1
/31/2016 Today we were supposed to visit a tobacco farm. I was looking forward to this visit to learn how the tobacco for Cuban cigars is grown and processed. A special variety of tobacco, called Perigue, is grown in St. James Parish close to where I grew up in Louisiana. I've watched how the Louisiana farmers harvested and processed the Perique and was looking forward to seeing how the Cubans processed theirs.
However, it was not to be. At the last minute the decision was made to go to a biosphere reserve. And most of the time at the reserve was spent at lunch and at a coffee shop, which I'll describe here.
We arrived at the reserve and were dropped off at a bar where we could use the bathroom.
We met the biosphere guide at the bar and she gave us an introduction to the reserve. Part of the reserve was once a coffee plantation, which operated from 1802 to 1831, and we took the bus to the location where they processed the coffee.
The coffee was dried on the terraces you see here. Each terrace was paved and the coffee was spread out from 9am to about 5pm. Then it was piled up for the night and covered to keep it from getting wet.
Here's one of the terraces that is still paved. You can see the raised ring where the coffee was piled for the night.
When adequately dried, the coffee was taken to this mill where the dried flesh was separated from the coffee bean. The wheel was turned by slaves.
And that was the extent of the discussion about the biosphere reserve. We then went to lunch at a nice outdoor place and had a meal of black beans and rice, chicken, and pork. All very good.
As in almost all of our lunches, there was a group of Cuban musicians who then tried to sell us their CDs. It must be very easy to produce a music CD in Cuba because every group has one or more CDs to sell.
After lunch we were taken to a coffee shop on the reserve where we had a cup of coffee.
Some of our group in the coffee shop.
Judy and I each had a cappuccino, and it was very good.
After this, we headed back to the hotel, and along the way, ran into a small rain storm. I'm including this for our friends in California who may have forgotten what rain looks like :-)
We were not very hungry after the large lunch so a group of us went out for ice cream at a place close to the hotel. Here's Gene and Inez at the ice cream shop.
That concluded our Sunday. We only have one more day of tours, and tomorrow we go to a elementary school. We have to be up and ready to go at 8am tomorrow.