On the Cigar Trail in Cuba

 

(NYTimes) Walking along the gritty, darkening streets of Havana, I felt a sense of foreboding wash over me. A few paces ahead was a stranger. Jorge, he called himself, a young street hustler I had just met at a taxi stand outside the Hotel Capri. Jorge was dressed decidedly urban: an oversize San Diego Padres jersey, baggy denim shorts and Adidas shell-toe sneakers. Jorge was also charming, and through broken English he had enticed me from the touristy environs of downtown into what was eerily morphing into a barren, crumbling neighborhood of sagging rowhouses. The object of seduction: a box of Habanos, or hand-rolled cigars. Continued