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Ernest Hemingway isn't just remembered in Cuba, he's an institution and a cottage industry. The rambunctious American writer first started frequenting the island in the 1920s, when he was living just across the straits in Key West, the southernmost of the islands on the tip of the U.S. state of Florida. He moved there with his third wife Martha Gellhorn in 1940 and lived there until 1960, when he returned to the United States for medical treatment. He committed suicide the following year in Ketchum, Idaho.

Cuba formed the backdrop for a lot of his writing, particularly 'The Old Man and the Sea', and the farm he lived in became a pilgrimage in the 1950s for Hollywood's rich and fashionable. Hemingway was genuinely loved in Cuba, where he was known simply as "Ernesto" (his rather self-conscious attempts to spread his own preferred nickname of "Papa" were not quite as successful). In his turn, he donated his own Nobel prize for Literature to the Cuban people, and when the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by Castro in 1959 he was reported to have been delighted.

Hemingway met Castro in 1960, when Fidel awarded him several prizes for big game fishing. As narcissists obsessed with their own macho images, the two men had a lot in common. He described the revolution as 'an honest' one but it also has to be remembered that he died before Castro had declared himself to be a Communist.

All his haunts have now, predictably, become tourist meccas in Cuba. Starting with the Floridita bar he used to frequent in Havana, to his farm Finca Vigia which now lies on the edge of the expanding city, to the little fishing village of Cojimar 10 km east of Havana where he kept his yacht. Finca Vigia is now a museum with Hemingway's library of 9,000 books, stuffed heads and the typewriter he used to compose many of his masterpieces all laid out just as they were. One thing which might alarm Castro supporters and revolutionaries the world over is that the Cuban leader was reported to have taken Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' - an account of the Spanish civil war - into the Sierra with him in the 1950s to read as an example of guerrilla war. Master wordsmith Hemingway certainly was but history has shown him to be a rather less reliable historian or journalist!

The Museo Hemingway
Monday to Saturday: Open from 9 am till 4 pm Sunday: Open from 9 am till 12.30 pm Admisson about $3 Favorite spots of Ernest Hemingway "La Bodeguita del Medio", the bar in Habana Vieja where he used to drink his Mojitos. "La Floridita" In Habana Vieja as well for drinking his Daiquiries. Both bars are today very touristic and expensive places.

Cojimar
	Ernest's fishing boat 'El Pilar' is on display here. Cojimar is used as the setting for Hemingway's Nobel prize winning novel, 'The Old Man and the Sea'. In 1962 a huge neo-clasical monument was built here to honor Hemingway, and in its center is featured a guilded bust of the great American author and international sportsman.

Gregorio Fuentes

Born July 11 1897, Lanzarote, Canary Islands. Hemingway's captain was probably the role model for the main character in the 'Old Man and the Sea'. He had lived at Calle 98 #209 till January 2002. He immigrated to Cuba as a 6-year-old boy onboard a ship in which his father was the cook. Tragically, his father died during the voyage. Another Canary Island immigrant took care of him. Around 1930 Hemingway hired Fuentes to captain his boat, 'El Pilar', named after his wife at the time. After Hemingway left Cuba Fuentes donated the boat to the Cuban government.

January 13, 2002

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) --
Gregorio Fuentes,
who was boat captain to
Ernest Hemingway when the late
American writer lived in Cuba, died
early Sunday at age 104, his family
said. Fuentes had suffered from
cancer.

For nearly 30 years, Fuentes was captain,
cook and friend to the American writer.
Many say he was the inspiration for the
protagonist in Hemingway's classic 'The
Old Man and the Sea'.
"He died in the house he had always lived
in," his grandson Rafael Fuentes, 48, told
The Associated Press. He has buried
Sunday afternoon.