Our Quest goes to Havana this time. The capital of Cuba is known to everyone from songs, documentaries and movies. And then suddenly you find yourself there yourself. Havana immediately grabs you with its brightly colored vintage cars, balconies full of flapping laundry, beautiful "Parisian" buildings and the squares and streets in the old part of town, Havana Vieja. The old building "El Capitolio" is reminiscent of the White House. Our cab driver with sombrero transported us through the city in a 1953 vintage Chevy. In the upscale Miramar district, we visit the famous Plaza de Revolución, where Fidel Castro made his hour-long speeches. After spending two days in this beautiful Ciudad, we will travel to the South Side of Cuba, where we will discover Cubita Coffee.
Trinidad is a colorful village on the south side of this elongated beautiful island. Its friendly residents, beautiful mountainous landscape and old dilapidated cobblestone streets immediately catch your eye. Horse and cart are the preferred means of transportation here and bicycle cabs drive to and fro. With this means of transport and accompanied by a guide, we discover the Trinidad of 1885. Sights that we visit include marshalling yards with locomotives and trains still in use from the Cowboys' era, an old pottery factory, a pre-war pub full of Mochitos and the old market where locals and farmers sell their wares.
We stay in a Cuban Bed & Breakfast that gives us a glimpse into the life of a real Cuban family, to leave the next day by Russian troop truck for Topes de Collantes. This is a natural landscape in the Guamuhaya Mountains that is protected by the government. This is where we will look for the coffee plantations that have been home to the original Cuban coffee plants for centuries.
The product coffee has come a long way before it originated in Cuba in 1748. This route is called the "Ruta del café por el Mundo" and begins in distant Abyssinia, which is now Ethiopia. After this, the journey continues to Yemen, Turkey, France and then by galleon across the ocean to Martinique, Suriname and finally to Cuba. According to some historians, coffee arrived in Cuba via the Spanish, but this is a debate that we believe will never be clarified....
Cuba, also called the Pearl of the Caribbean, produces its four main products completely autonomously. The main products the country produces, also called "Los Ultimos," are: rum, tobacco, sugar, and .... the Cuban coffee!
The original Cubita has a somewhat bitter taste and unleashes many recognizable flavorings such as earth, stone, wood, vanilla and sugars. Its long slopes full of wooded plantations of coffee plants and centuries-old forest trees have already made the hearts of many coffee connoisseurs from around the world beat faster.
We drink the Cubita the original way: via De Colador, a coffee filter made from an old cloth. The Cuban takes natural drinking water from the waterfall in the river-rich mountains and boils it along with raw sugar in an old jug. This is then poured into the Colador filled with ground coffee. A slightly different experience than a cup of coffee from one of our professional coffee machines.... After a processing time of over two minutes, we enjoy a stunning finished product that makes up for the trip to this beautiful island in one sitting!
The Colador has been replaced in the daily use of the Cuban by the "Cafetera," an Italian invention. This new way of brewing coffee was embraced by Cubans after its introduction in 1933 and became part of everyday life. Cuban coffee has no foam like espresso or a crema of a Lungo. The taste is much stronger than our coffee and also contains no milk. Sugar is not added to this coffee after brewing because it is already added during brewing. This makes Cuban coffee unique.
Importing Cubita coffee to the Netherlands and offering it through our unique coffee concept unfortunately remains a pipe dream. The challenge is and remains the still strongly communist regime that rules Cuba. We will first have to get U.S. President Trump to give us permission to do so, because if you do business with Cuba now, you will immediately be blacklisted by him and then the boycott is a fact.... So maybe next time we will have to travel to Washington for a unique blog about (Cuban) coffee.....
We conclude this trip in Varadero, where we enjoy Cuba's only 5-star hotel. We land on Bounty beaches and enjoy delicious Cuban food and wines. Our opinion of Cuba? Highly recommended Pur Sang!
