The Hemingway Trail: Drinking A Mojito In The Place Where It Was Invented - La Bodeguita Del Medio in Havana, Cuba 🇨🇺

“My Mojito in La Bodeguita. My Daiquiri in El Floridita” – Ernest Hemingway.

The Hemingway Trail: Drinking A Mojito In La Bodeguita Del Medio in Havana, Cuba 🇨🇺

I can’t repeat myself too much in these posts but the eginnings are similar because, I’m on the Hemingway trail and I now realise it’s easily enough on its own for another book…Hemingway and Palin combined. Years ago I was inspired by the travels of Michael Palin. It all started in the 1980s when Mum and Dad bought me first up a Panini football sticker album for the 1986 World Cup. I loved that book so much as it showed me 24 countries from around the world. As well as my Northern Irish heroes like Norman Whiteside, Gerry Armstrong, Billy Hamilton, Pat Jennings and Ian Stewart, I also loved Diego Maradona…

Drawing Maradona and the Norn Iron page of my Mexico 86 Panini album

At Christmas in 1986, my parents then bought me a Concise Atlas of the World and at home we had two jigsaws. A jigsaw map of The British Isles and a jigsaw map of the world. By 1988, my attention turned to a Michael Palin adventure called Around The World In 80 Days. It was a television series inspired by the Jules Verne novel of the same name. In it, Michael Palin travelled around the world by land and sea, only – no flights. From the Reform Club in Pall Mall in London and back to the same place 80 days later. It was a classic television series and documentary and very successful, igniting within me some kind of fire and flair for backpacking the world. Later Michael Palin went on another adventure for a BBC documentary called The Hemingway Adventure. This was both a television series, and a book. Dad and I did what we could to watch them, usually of a Sunday evening on the settee over a cup of the Earl Grey.

The Hemingway Trail: Drinking A Mojito In La Bodeguita Del Medio in Havana, Cuba 🇨🇺

Some of that series was focused on Cuba and therefore on arrival in Cuba in December 2022, I decided to copy some of the Palin trail on the Hemingway quest. My stories on this have all been ridiculous that I sometimes cannot fathom them nor contemplate them or work out why it all happens. Basically I also copied Palin on my Indian adventure in 2016. I only went to Gujarat to do the Palin alcohol permit and tour Gandhi’s home city, Ahmedabad. Two years before that, in 2014 I was into my “Writer’s Lairs” during my Central America tour and I actually celebrated visiting my last country in mainland America (and unknown to me at the time – country 100!) with a beer at The Hemingway Inn in San Jose, Costa Rica. My count was all wrong – I celebrated Tunisia as country 100, but actually, that award was done 6 months earlier in Costa Rica.

Country 100 was actually…Costa Rica

World Borders: How to Get From Nicaragua to Costa Rica (Granada to San Jose)

I was in Miller’s room – ridiculous as I’d be writing and touring with fellow writer Michael Miller – check his books. Then, later in 2014, I’d meet a tourist called Miller in Eastern Europe and she would play a huge role in my journeys. There was even more madness in 2015 when my ferry from Estonia to Finland stopped in the middle of the Baltic Sea and I was stranded. After a stressful day, I finally made it to Helsinki, where…the first port of call was The Hemingway Inn. Later, Gliwice reared another crazy head in the tales where I drank in the Hemingway Bar. Fool Circle again, I’ve shelved it for a book title. All of those wacaday stories will be fit for a separate book of mine one day. I just don’t have the time anymore. Anynow.

“TBL / Too busy living” – Jonny Scott Blair, 2023.

One night of pure inspiration – my stay in the Hemingway Inn, San Jose, Costa Rica.

Having a beer at the Hemingway Bar with Deacon Blake celebrating my final country in mainland America.

Palin getting his alcohol permit in Gujarat

Blair also getting his alcohol permit in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Palin on the rip in Gujarat

Blair on the rip in Gujarat

An even more ridiculous full circle /fool circle happened on my last night in The Bahamas in January 2023…I was sat drinking Micheladas for sunset in a bar called Margarita Club at Junkanoo Beach in Nassau in New Providence in The Bahamas…I got chatting to another guy drinking at the bar and then I mentioned to him that I am a big Michael Palin fan.

“Michael Palin? That’s my Dad!!” he said.

I was gobsmacked, flabbergasted and I didn’t believe him at first. But it was true…I met William Palin and was drinking with him on the 1st January 2023. This is Michael Palin’s son and I was destined to meet him on that final night of that trip as I was able to get inspired and write some great stuff on the flight after that.

Actually drinking with Michael Palin’s son – full circle madness or what??

However, let’s rewind a few weeks to my first night out in Havana, Cuba where I needed a Hemingway brace. I wanted to –

1.Have a Mojito in La Bodeguita Del Medio – the place where it was invented!
2.Have a Daiquiri in El Floridita – the place where it was invented!

The Hemingway quote on the wall in La Bodeguita references that this is what Hemingway did, it looks like the quote is on a tissue and signed by Hemingway himself, though this is debated and hasn’t been proved. We didn’t have Instagram in those days…but yet I wanted to nab the brace…

The Hemingway quote on the wall in La Bodeguita

Here in the poky back streets of Havana Old Town, sits yet another bar made famous by Ernest Hemingway (shock shock). This bar sits on Calle Empedrado and is called La Bodeguita Del Medio.

“I shot myself hoarse for your supernatural powers” – Space.