Green and Rustic Viñales: Tobacco Farms, Mogotes and Casa Particulares

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Regional History, Travel

The road from Havana to Viñales is 180km of often grinding, bumpy and gravelly surfaces. We reached Cuba’s far-western province (Pinar del Río) and closed in on Valle de Viñales, a destination well worth the three to four-hour haul. The 11km long Viñales valley is situated in remote countryside but the whole valley has a “postcard pretty” Arcadian look to it, a veritable, verdant green-belt of agrarian plenitude. Everything is lush and green, everywhere, acres and acres of tobacco fields stretching back to the mountains.

The built-up area of Viñales isn’t very “built-up” as townships go. In fact Viñales probably qualifies as no more than pueblo (village) size, it is really an aldea (hamlet) and a laid back, low-key one at that. We drove up and down the main drag, Salvador Cisneros, to get a feel of the place…sleepy and slow-paced even here. A few cars and trucks around, but mainly they were sharing the road with oxen and horses pulling carts. Small and off the pace it may be but there’s a good scattering of restaurants and bars (both alcoholic ones and Tapas ones), sufficient variety to satisfy hungry visitors. One store I spotted on Salvador, breaking a continuous line of eateries, was doing a roaring trade – it was, naturally enough, the pueblo’s rum and cigar shop!

Viñales is devoid of hotels (nearest: Pinar del Río) but tourist accommodation is amply catered for through casas particulares (private guesthouses), which there are in droves. Every street in the village had its fill of brightly painted colonial wooden houses which functioned as homestays. We stayed in a very compact casa two blocks back from the village centre, it was tucked in among a row of about ten or so casas all side-by-side. From the front the houses looked cutely quaint, or quaintly cute (take your pick!), with their colourful walls and sillóns (rocking chairs) on the porches. We had a friendly pair of hosts, guajiros – as rural folk are commonly called in Cuba.  . Desayunos were right up to expectations, omelette of choice, porridge with exotic fruits, tea or coffee (breakfasts in the casas all over Cuba were uniformly similarly) [see PostScript on Cuban casas].

Outside of the village the landscape is dotted with distinctive geographical features called mogotes (craggy limestone monoliths, many the size of massive boulders), which provide a fitting, ambient backdrop to the flourishing green fields covered with tobacco farms. We visited one nearby farm and did a tour on foot round the fields (another popular option for tourists in Viñales is to tour the tobacco farms on horseback)…we were taken (in meticulous detail)  through the process involved in making the distinctive cylinders of rolled tobacco Cuba is famous for. Although tobacco and cigar production is the name of the game here, the plantation also engages in diversified (secondary) farming, other crops (sweet potato, beans, corn, etc) were being grown on any soil that was not already taken up with tobacco plants.

We were in the drying hut being shown by the carga de mano how to smoke a cigar Cuban-style when something humorous but also quite poignant occurred. Roaming purposelessly all over the tobaco granja were these countless, mangy dogs, one of them lumbered slowly into the hut in the middle of the cigar demonstration and lay down on the floor. Unexpectedly, to my surprise the old dog started wheezing, laboriously, continuously and heavily…the tobacco farm dog, it seemed, by dint of its constant exposure to the harmful weed, had become a victim of passive smoking!

PostScript: Casa particulares
Several years ago, as part of their liberalisation initiatives, the Cuban regime gave a nod to the existence of small-scale private enterprise and specifically to permit home-owners to let out their rooms to visitors. In Viñales as elsewhere in the country this opportunity has been taken up with gusto! The bulk of the hosts seem to be older Cuban women (often the casas have names like Mirtha, Isabelita and Elisa), many of them are easily of retirement age※. This concession by the government seems to have been of double benefit to many – providing a bit of extra income to supplement their modest pensions, and at the same time there’s the social dimension of older folks making contacts…from the comfort of their own porches they are meeting the world! One host proudly showed me the various gifts she had received from guests from across the globe (and of course among them was the clichéd furry toy koala!)

From staying at quite a few casas in different parts of the island, what was crystal clear was the variance in quality between guesthouses (just like with hotels!). Quite a lot (in Havana especially) were very poky and some were offering the most basic of “no-frills” facilities. Others were roomy, well-serviced and welcoming (the host’s command of English helped with this). Generally the (front) ante-rooms were quite extravagantly arranged and decorated. Unfortunately, something that did not vary much was the water pressure, in many casas it amounted to no more than a pitiful trickle, a reminder in the plumbing if we needed it that Third World conditions were still the norm here, especially when it came to the basics!

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※ another observable pattern are homestays or casas run by mother-and-daughter teams 

John Wanamaker, Evangelical Retailer and Innovator

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Biographical, Regional History, Retailing history

Wanamaker’s department stores were an innovative 19th century prototype of American retail enterprise best remembered today for the drive and vigour of its founder in establishing the company regionally on the Atlantic Seaboard. John Wanamaker’s humble origins in the retail trade began with the small menswear store known as “Oak Hall” (Philadelphia) he started up in partnership with his brother-in-law in the early days of the American Civil War.

From the get-go Wanamaker exhibited a flair for innovation, demonstrating an aptitude for thinking outside the box in retailing. Wanamaker introduced concepts in his business that were quite radical in retailing of the day. One of the earliest, which seems self-evident to us today, was to establish the principle of price-setting. Before Wanamaker started putting price tags on his goods, the practice in shops was that the price of an item would be determined by haggling between the customer of the salesperson. Wanamaker, as a devout Christian imbued with the Protestant work ethic, espoused the principle of price equality…as he liked to say (repeatedly), “if everyone was equal before God, then everyone should be equal before price”✱[1]. Wanamaker also allowed customers the option of returning the goods (within a specified time period) and receiving a refund, a practice that was unusual in retailing at that time.

Truth (and volume) in advertising
From the time he was a teenager Wanamaker developed an appreciation of the value of publicity. One of his early publicity stunts for the store was to release 20 foot balloons and reward those who retrieved them with a free suit from Wanamaker’s. From as early as the 1860s the Philadelphia merchant relied on advertising to propel his business forward. Wanamaker took out large size ads in newspapers, which proved expensive, but nonetheless generated a large volume of sales. During the War between the States the store was kept afloat by being able to supply Union Army officers’ uniforms to the Northern side. By 1909 the retailer was placing ads daily in the press. Wanamaker assiduously built consumer trust…when he placed retail ads offering low prices for wares, he kept his word to the public[2].

Wanamaker usually didn’t miss a business opportunity when it came along. In 1876 he purchased Pennsylvania Railroad property and turned it into what would become Wanamaker’s flagship store, named the Grand Depot. Located on the corner of 13th and Market Streets, Philadelphia, Wanamaker promoted it as a “New Kind of Store”, adding women’s clothing and dry goods to the existence outlet for menswear, arguably making it one of if not the world’s first department store. The original building (architect: Daniel Burnham) boosted an exotic Moorish-style facade, the building that he erected much later on the same site had a classic Florentine facade.

Other Wanamaker retail innovations
The Pennsylvanian merchant was ahead of the curve in many ways, pioneering marketing strategies as well as being an early proponent of advertising. Other firsts for the Wanamaker stores included:

◗ the first department store to include a restaurant inside its complex
◗ the first department store with electrical illumination
◗ the first department store to have telephone communications
◗ the first department store to use pneumatic tube transit (to internally move cash and documents around the store)
◗ the first department store to have an elevator
◗ the first department store to have a wireless station
◗ the first department store to engage buyers to travel to Europe to acquire the latest fashions[3]

Wanamaker also pioneered a series of individual benefits for his staff members – free medical care, profit-sharing, pensions (all ahead of his competitors). Wanamaker implemented measures for staff training that were in advance of their time…establishing an in-house college, the Wanamaker Commercial Institute, providing his workers with skills and tuition in bookkeeping, finance, English and maths◘. He also initiated summer camps for young men and women on the payroll – in keeping with Wanamaker’s characteristic intertwining of religion and business, this was to equip them with moral instruction and development[4].

Wanamaker’s continued to grow into a small chain of stores…by the early 20th century Wanamaker had 16 department stores operating, mainly regionally, but the network included a showcase store in New York City (1896), between East 9th and 10th streets (in the ‘NoHo’ neighbourhood of Manhattan). Later Wanamaker built a second building opposite and connected them via an overhead walkway he called the “Bridge of Progress”.

Grand Depot mega-store
Wanamaker’s most ambitious store project was a massive transformation of the Philly retail store in 1910. The store was radically re-shaped in the form of a wheel with a 90 foot circular counter and 129 smaller sales counters installed in concentric circles. Wanamaker claimed that he had created “the largest space devoted to retail selling on a single floor”[5]. And, to give his new City Center flagship store a touch of imperial grandeur, the store contained a “Grand Court”, to which he added a Grand Court organ and a large bronze eagle⊙ (both of which had featured in the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair).

Wanamaker died in 1922 and his successor (his second son) in 1928, but the business continue to thrive and expand until the 1960s and 1970s. Increasingly though Wanamaker as a regional player wasn’t able to match it with national retail chains. Even in Philadelphia it was losing its market share to Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. In 1978 Wanamaker’s was sold to California’s Carter Hawley Hale Stores, which tried to revive its fortunes but failed. Still trading as Wanamaker’s, it was then on-sold to Alfred Taubman’s Woodward and Lothrop. Under Woodward and Lothrop it again declined, then downsized to five stores, and eventually went into bankruptcy. In 1995 they were further sold to retail giant Macy’s, bringing to a close 133 years of Wanamaker’s retail history[7]. Despite the sense of inevitability, for many Philadelphians, the end of Wanamaker’s was a heartfelt moment, the loss of “a unique public institution and a powerful symbol of Philadelphia’s commercial viability”[8].

PostScript: Wanamaker’s diversified interests
Wanamaker at one point founded a bank (First Penny Savings Bank) to encourage Americans to embrace thrift. He also established a trades school in Elwyn, Pa. Between his business activities Wanamaker found time for a (four-year) stint as a civil servant…President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Postmaster-General in 1889. Wanamaker initiated some reforms (eg, brought in parcel post, erected a pneumatic tube system to US post offices), but his term was not without controversy (mass sacking of 30,000 postal workers, accusations of having ‘purchased’ the post of PMG).

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✱ Wanamaker conceivably got the idea of fixed prices from the English Quakers, “fixed prices made everyone equal in the eyes of God”, Mary Pilon, The Monopolists, (2015). As befits someone with a bent for religious proselytising, Wanamaker had quite a penchant for pet mottos and maxims in business
◘ not as altruistic as it first sounds, there was a strong element of self-interest on Wanamaker’s part, the business ‘titan’ had an abhorrence of the labour movement and his generosity was insurance against the prospect of his workforce ever becoming unionised (Hingson)
⊙ Wanamaker’s Eagle became such an institution that Philadelphians would conveniently use it as a meet-up point when coming to the city (‘Wanamaker Organ’)

Source: Smithsonian (Postal Museum)


⌖ ⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖

[1] ‘John Wanamaker, Innovator’, (Who Made America?), www.pbs.org
[2] ‘Wanamaker, John, (1838-1922), Ad Age, 15-Sep-2003, www.adage.com
[3] ‘Wanamaker’s’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.Wikipedia.org; ‘Facts and Figures about the Wanamaker Organ’, www.wanamakerorgan.com
[4] ‘Thirteen Things You Might Not Know About John Wanamaker’, (Sandy Hingson), Philadelphia Magazine, 11-Jul-2016, www.phillymag.com
[5] ‘John Wanamaker A retailing innovator’, The Philly Inquirer, 22-June-1995, (Andrew Maykuth Online), www Maykuth.com; ‘Who Made America?’, loc.cit.
[6] ‘John Wanamaker’, Wikipedia,http://en.m.Wikipedia.org
[7] ‘Wanamaker’s’, Wikipedia, op.cit.
[8] Sarah Malino, review of Herbert Ershkowitz’s John Wanamaker: Philadelphia Merchant, (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol.125, No 1/2, Jan-Apr 2001)

La Habana Vieja and Bishop Street: Old Havana Inside Out!

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Regional History, Travel

From our landing point in Havana, we made straight for our casa in the city. Tiny room (especially for two!), all round minimalism, minimal Inglés spoken by the staff, but it was right in the heart of La Habana Vieja, the old city. Two cross-streets (most of the ‘streets’ are hardly more than lane width!) away from our guesthouse is Calle Obispo (Bishop Street), a cobblestone pedestrian thoroughfare that runs through the heart of Old Havana – we made for this place pretty much as soon as we settled our belongings in the room.

Obispo connects Parque Central (near Havana’s main street Paseo de Martí, AKA Paseo del Prado) at one end with Plaza de Armas and the waterfront at the other. A big chunk of the activity, the vibe, happens on or around this street. A real assortment of shops, giftwares and numerous eateries to choose from. There are cafés and several banks/ATMs for your dinero necessities on Obispo. Obispo is the easiest spot to pick up a bargain souvenir or memento, the “el cheapo” place to buy artesano regalo items is the small undercover handicrafts market half-way up Obispo.

To get an appreciation of the authentic cuisine of the working class, what the average Habanero eats, Varíedades Obispo (Obispo Varieties shop) is the place to visit…come here to experience eating like the assembled masses do on a permanently limited budget – simple but fresh, basic, no-frills comida and dirt cheap! Just a few shops down from Varíedades is one Obispo’s two farmacias, Drogueria Johnson. Everything about the Johnson Drugstore looks historic, from the name sombrely and impressively engraved on the stone facade outside to the types of pharmacy lines inside. It seems like a relic from 1950s La Habana that somehow survived the Revolution! The shop tends to resemble a museum in some ways – and yet it still operates daily as a pharmacy service. A novel experience for anyone who can’t remember the pharmacies of the fifties.

Obispo Street’s not a great place to hover round in if you are ochlophobic✱ – in this busy thoroughfare crowd mingling is more or less unavoidable! Busy it may be but bustling it is not! People tend to stroll up and down Obispo at a very relaxed pace, taking in the sights, sounds and smells. Obispo is certainly an odoriferous experience…the smell of fresh churros being made by vendors is a lingering olfactory delight, the ubiquitous presence of stray dogs in the street and their random “calling card” deposits however is a more malodorous experience.

On our last day in Havana there was a colourful street carnival happening right along Obispo – performers on stilts wearing vivid, silky garments and flowing robes were winding their way in a slow procession down the narrow thoroughfare as the crowds swelled around them, dancing, constant pulsating musical rhythms, everything seemed quite spontaneous and of course the locals were right into it!

Keep heading east on Calle Obispo, past the Cuban band with its musicians all decked out in white, and you’ll reach the tree-lined Plaza de Armas, an ideal spot to get away from the full-on tourist overload of Obispo. With seating all around the square it’s easy to find a calm, quiet spot shaded by large trees overhead and be surrounded by the presence of nice greenery. After you’ve rested a bit, there’s history on all sides of the plaza to see – as you enter the plaza you pass a elegant white, mansion-like building, Casa de Gobnierno y Palacio de Municipal. Capitanes Generales Palace, as it is also known, is now a museum with a grand courtyard, but at the time of the Spanish-American War (1898) this was the American Government’s administrative headquarters for the four years the US was in control of the island of Cuba. You can pick up a souvenir “Revolutionary green” military cap with obligatory red star from the hawkers constantly circling round the square – it will cost you 2-3 CUC more if you want one with the iconic image of “El Che” (Guevara) as well!.

To the immediate north of Plaza de Armas is Havana’s historic colonial bastion fort, the Castillo de la Real Fuerza (lit. “Castle of Royal Force”) complete with watchtower, moat and thick limestone walls…the fortress was built to defend against unwelcome 16th century privateers and buccaneers. Its location looks strategically sound to me, looking straight down the bay towards the open sea, but I read somewhere, in the ‘Rough Planet’ guide I think it was, that the powers-that-be in colonial times weren’t all that thrilled about where it was located (it should have been right on the water’s edge apparently) and this led to the Castillo being decommissioned earlier than intended. Since it’s military function ceased, it has been variously used as for archives and conservation, as a library, and is now the National Maritime Museum. Interestingly, the info sign on the fort entrance gate near the rusty old cannons is in two languages – Spanish and Braille!

If you hang round the Plaza long enough you are better than an “even money” bet to meet, without any effort on your part, young local women keen to make your acquaintance…they are very friendly and if you converse with them for any amount of time, you’ll discover that a surprising number of them, by coincidence, are professional dancers currently in a hiatus period work-wise. Their sociability and amiability will often extend to an abiding interest in knowing the location of your casa! Prudence and a cautionary approach is strongly recommended to visiting single tourists.

If you have managed to escape the attentions of the convivial ladies doing their utmost to supplement their meagre monthly wages, take a right at Plaza de Armas and head down Oficios, you’ll soon be at San Francisco Plaza, a large, open square bereft of shade facing the Cruise Ship Terminal (Terminal Sierra Maestra). As you enter the plaza the first item of interest immediately to your left is a modernist sculpture directly in front of the formidable looking Lonja del Comercio commercial building. This relatively recently added (2012) French-created, bronze sculpture (aptly named ‘In Conversation’) catches the eye of most visitors. I like the way the piece plays with the space of the two figures, leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps – both the physical gaps of space and what the two engrossed in dialogue might be conversing about…its an intriguing and compelling piece of public art!

Also, worthy of a peek on the opposite side of the Plaza, astride the archaic Convento de la San Francisco, is a much older, representational sculpture, a statue of the celebrated and loveable Havana vagrant ‘Cabellero de Paris’. Visitors line up here for the chance to take a ‘selfie’ with an arm round the bronze shoulder of one of the “favourite sons” of old Havana. Pedestrians tend to slowly circle around the square, taking in the sights, the buildings, the sculptures and statues, the famous fountain, the busy ferry terminal. Never far away from the wandering tourists are the souvenir hawkers, especially visible here are the ambling cigar-sellers peddling the trademark product synonymous with everything Cuban. From San Francisco Plaza head west for a sight of Plaza Vieja with its central fountain and colourful collection of arched colonial buildings in pastel blues and yellows. From here, take any street to the right and you’ll end up you back in Obispo and tourism central.

Obispo – looking toward Plaza de Armas ◮
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✱ someone with an extreme fear or dislike of crowds

El Alamein: Wandering through the War Cemeteries and Ossuaries of Egypt’s Western Desert

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Military history, Regional History, Travel

The drive from Alexandria to El Alamein was a pretty tedious affair, the M40 is a dry, dusty, monotonously homogeneous-looking road. On the right we gleaned glimpses of the sea interspersed with long lines of newish looking seaside villas and resorts (many appear unoccupied), which contrasted with a vista of unremitting desert wasteland on the left. One hundred and six kilometres of hum-humdrum tedium in fact!

href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-20.jpg”> Fortress-like German military cemetery, El Alamein[/
When we got to the turnoff for the El Alamein township, we continued straight on the Marsa Matrouh Road to where the military cemeteries of the Axis powers are. Unfortunately, we drove straight past the entrance to the German war cemetery and made for the Italian War Mausoleum (Ai Caduti Italiani)…this was a disappointment for me, had I have had the choice I know which I would have chosen, it would have been fascinating to see the monuments to Rommel the “Desert Fox”, the Afrika Korps, the Wehrmacht and all the Nazi trappings. Apparently we were too constrained time-wise to visit, needing to get back to Alexandria before nightfall…either that or our guide on the El Alamein tour bought entry tickets to just one of these ossuaries and he chose the Italian one! (ummm, would have been nice to have received a heads-up of what the options were).

ref=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-21.jpg”> Italian Military Cemetery, El Alamein[/ca
All that said, it shouldn’t dissuade anyone from a visit to the Italian cemetery, it has its own charms and attractions to recommend it. At the mausoleum entrance there are tangible symbols of the Italian presence in the Western Desert during the World War, an Italian armoured tank coloured-coded to blend in with both the ground and the triple-arched portal. Aesthetically the cemetery grounds are a gorgeous scene – a beautiful orange grove and verdant green garden of rose bushes, desert flowers and palm trees on either side of a stone pathway which lead up steps to a superb mausoleum standing out against the glimmering water backdrop of the Mediterranean. As we walked slowly towards the mausoleum on its raised foundation, it felt like we were the only people within cooee of the Italian site, but it turned out we were not alone…a young Bedouin girl quietly slipped up behind us and softly but animatedly started talking to my wife. There were initial ciaos and prontos followed by a burst of fluent Italian. It took us a couple of minutes to work out what the Bedouin girl wanted as she persisted in her enquiries in Italian, but eventually we twigged – she must have thought we were Italian, perhaps visiting a relative who had been in the war. She was inviting us to take a photo with her at the mausoleum – no doubt in return for some baksheesh! As she just suddenly materialised out of nowhere, I concluded that the girl must spend her days staking herself out under the cover of the rose bushes and orange trees waiting to pounce on unsuspecting, approaching tourists.

f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/image-22.jpg”> Interior of the Italian ossuary[/capt
Inside the white limestone mausoleum building, a high, narrow tomb, is the final resting place of more than 5,200 Italian soldiers, sailors and airmen positioned, like files in a filing cabinet, one above each other into the walls. My on-the-spot ‘guesstimation” was that up to a quarter of all those interred in the mausoleum bore no name but the singular, poignant and anonymous inscription, ‘incogniti’!

Returning from the Italian mausoleum visit, we stopped briefly at the El Alamein Military Museum. We didn’t venture inside, hanging around only long enough to pick up some lunch and an unscheduled, solo hitchhiker from Israel on his way to Libya! Bakr, our Egyptian guide, clearly uncomfortable at the arrangement, didn’t much like our giving a lift to someone Jewish (and especially an Israeli!), in an aside to me he uttered a warning that he would be trouble. Bakr however insisted that it was my call, as I was the one hiring the transport for the excursion! I didn’t feel that this solitary 65-year-old retired Israeli tourist posed a threat to our liberty or security, so I had no objections to him tagging along with us.

The next stop was the vast Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery (CWGC) which was an even more affecting sight – over 7,300 soldiers and airmen from all corners of the then British Empire✱ are buried in symmetrical formations in the sandy clay (as with the Italian ossuary, around 820 of the dead remain unidentified). The Australian section of graves stretches over a quite sizeable part of the cemetery.

Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery ▼
The memorial building, sand-blond in colour and with lavish arches, is a fitting and respectful tribute to those who fell in the desert campaign. The cost of establishing and maintaining CWGC is met by contributions from the Commonwealth countries whose soldiers took part in that theatre of war, its lawns, groves and gardens are kept in immaculate shape by a dedicated staff of Egyptian groundsmen and gardeners. After the visit to the Commonwealth graves we returned to the war museum where we dropped off the Israeli guy. As we turned the vehicle into the road that took us back to Alexandria he was last seen on the M40 getting into in some fracas with an Egyptian guard over his travel papers.

Footnote: elsewhere at El Alamein, located separately, there are two other, tiny military cemeteries commemorating combatants on different sides who lost their lives in World War II – a Greek war memorial (its portal taking the form of an ancient Greek temple) and cemetery containing the remains of that nation’s soldiers who died in the two battles of El Alamein. There is another ossuary memorial to Libyan troops who fought for Fascist Italy in the campaign. Bakr didn’t mention either of these war cemeteries and I certainly didn’t spot them on our travels.

PostScript: as I wandered off the edges of the Commonwealth Military Cemetery Bakr was quick to remind me that the vast expanses of desert was full of unpleasant surprises in the shape of unexploded land mines. These still ‘live’ explosives, estimated to number many millions all over the Western Desert, were planted during the African campaign in WWII…a strong antidote to curb anyone’s wanderlust urges (even tourists’) if ever there was one!

Ξ‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒‒-‒‒-‒-‒‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-‒‒-Ξ
✱ a number of the Free French soldiers who fought with the British are also buried in the ground of the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery