Puros

Cigars, puros, tabaco, habanos... they all mean the same thing. And Cuba is famous for them. In Havana we cut a deal with a man selling cigars. He found us near the cathedral in the old town, and wanted us to come to his restaurant. When I said we'd already eaten, he dropped his voice to a whisper and asked if we'd like to buy some cigars. It wasn't the first offer we'd gotten. But we were trying to play it cool, to not buy them from just anyone, to show these guys we were savvy. I speak Spanish and my husband knows about cigars. As a team, we couldn't be beat. At least we felt that way as the guy from the restaurant, whose name is Nene, led us down the street and around the corner to his cousin's apartment. The cousin took us into the bedroom where he pulled out a crate full of high-end cigars and laid each box out on the bed. Brian sniffed them, Nene described them, I interpreted, we all talked in soft voices and I tried to play it cool. Which I'm sure I didn't. Playing it cool is not my strong suit. But it worked, anyway. Brian got a small box to take on our travels and we agreed on a price and a date to come back and buy more before we returned to Germany.


The cigars were most likely stolen, though we heard stories too about certain days of the year when tobacco factory workers could buy them cheap, or that they got coupons to cash in for boxes for personal use. Either way, we got the cigars at rock-bottom prices while Nene and the guy selling them made some decent money. I guess the government lost out. As we stuffed the cigar box into a bag which I shoved in my purse, I felt like we'd had a very Cuban experience. In a place where the black market thrives, buying the cigars from a store would just be... inauthentic.