Hemmingway House

Hemmingway House

So Saturday we traveled to the house of the famous novelist, Ernest Hemmingway.  I personally have never read any of his works, but as he is such a famous person in this country (even more so than in the US I would say) that might have to change soon.  The first town that we visited was called Cojimar, which is a tiny fishing town about thirty minutes from downtown Havana.  One of our taxi drivers, the infamous ladies man Marci, told us that this was just an average town for Cuba and not one of the poorest.  By American standards, people would not travel there at night.  It would be considered worse than the projects.  But in Cuba, it’s just another town.

Back to Hemingway’s story, he loved this town and it was where he kept his boat Pilar.  We went to one of the many bars that he loved to frequent all over the island.  The people of Cojimar loved him so much that they mined enough metal to have a statue of him cast and erected.  Not too shabby for an American.  Interestingly, I discovered that Hemmingway had a chauffer so that he could drink wherever he went and he had a boat driver so that he could maintain a habitual state of intoxication. 

After visiting Cojimar, we traveled an additional 20 minutes and arrived at the Museo de Hemmingway.  This place is a palace by Cuban standards.  He lived there even after the revolution because he was a Castro man.  He hated Bautista and completely supported the Revolution. J. Edgar Hoover had a giant file on him because he was such a fervent supporter of the communist regime here. 

Three things that stood out the most.  One, there was a boys baseball team practicing in his front yard.  Two, I saw the pool that Ava Gardner swam naked in.  And three, Hemmingway had four dogs, two of which were named Black and Negrita. (Negrita means little black one)  For someone who is considered one of the greatest writers of all time, he wasn’t too creative on the names of man’s best friend.

Hemmingway was apparently fastidious about his weight and always worried about what women thought of him.  On one of the interior walls there is a column of numbers where he kept track so he could motivate himself to lose more weight.  We just heard about this because you aren’t allowed inside the house, only around the outside to look through the windows.  Worried that Americans are going to get crazy ideas into their heads and steal everything.

The last interesting tid-bit from this American is that Hemmingway carried a gun when he went fishing so that he could kill sharks!