I don't know if there's any in San Francisco but there are bars around the world that love to play up the fact that Ernest Hemingway once, or many times, drank there. Bars like Sloppy Joe's in Key West and Harry's Bar in Venice know that a Hemingway association means more tourist traffic. This seems in keeping with Hemingway's own habit of embellishing his biography to enhance his image. He made himself into a legend both to suit his ego and to sell books.

Hemingway, or Papa as he was known, would be one-hundred this year. The centennial means a marketing gold mine. Witness the soon-to-be published posthumous novel, True at First Light. A new "Ernest Hemingway Furniture Collection". And, to the delight of tourist agencies around the world, a bevy of Hemingway festivals and conferences to be held in Spain, China, Ukraine, Key West and Cuba. Cashing in on Papa is nothing new in Havana. There are plenty of landmarks associated with the writer in Cuba...many of them playing into the myth of a myth-maker. To find out what lives on besides the souvenirs, we sent Jeff Tyler on a Hemingway tour of Havana.

Hemingway in Havana
by Jeff Tyler

Listen with RealAudio          Need audio help?

Visit this page on Tuesday, June 22 to listen with RealAudio.

Havana vieja. Old Havana. An anachronism of '56 Chevys and Soviet-era jalopies cruising past the crumbling facades of 4-hundred year old buildings.

Near the Catedral de San Cristobal, sweet songs spill out of a restaurant where musicians play for tips. Other Cubans, hit hard by the country's economic woes, peddle their wares to tourists: cigars, mementoes with "I 'heart' Cuba" carved in wood and T-shirts with Ernest Hemingway's face emblazoned across the front.

Cubans claim Papa as one of their own. They adopted him after he adopted Cuba, where he lived for more than two decades. Here, as everywhere he went, Hemingway cultivated a reputation as a man larger than life: A figure who could out-drink an alcoholic and reel in bigger marlin than a professional fisherman. The legend lives on in old haunts that play up their status as Hemingway landmarks.

Places like the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where Papa polished For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's just around the corner from the cathedral.

La Bodeguita del Medito photo courtesy Jim Vincent

The hotel bellboy showed me the room late one night. Always the same room, he says. Fifth floor, on the corner looking out past the cathedral to the sea.

Bellboy: "Ernest Hemingway lived here during the 30's. Seven years, 1932 to 1939. Because of its importance, it's conserved as a museum."

Just as he left it, says this part-time docent...Hemingway's typewriter, his books, photos of him with guns and fishing boats. But while Papa's room is preserved, the hotel has been remodeled. Rooms have phones, A/C, and CNN...a luxury in Havana. The prices reflect that...about 100 bucks a night. There's one bonus: Guests can visit Papa's room for free. Otherwise, it's two dollars.

But if you want to see where Hemingway spent time when he wasn't writing or sleeping, my hotel guide suggests...

Bellboy: "There were two bars he frequented a lot. At La Bodeguita he drank his mojitos. And daiquiris at La Floridita."

House band at La Bodeguita

Stumbling distance from the hotel, La Bodeguita has all the charm of a tourist trap: an unfriendly staff; weak, overpriced drinks and a loud and lousy house band. Amidst the clutter on the walls is graffiti, supposedly written by Hemingway, claiming La Bodeguita as the best place in town for that wonderful rum concoction he loved so much -- the mojito. But some say the endorsement is a fake, that Hemingway just lent his name to the place as a publicity stunt for the bar's owner.

La Floridita is a different story. This "cradle of the daiquiri" deserves a visit with or without the lure of Hemingway lore.

Count the ways to quench your thirst. The chocolate daiquiri. The melon. Or...the "chicklet," which looks like a shamrock shake, and tastes like...gum.

They're all good, but at six bucks a pop, well beyond the budget of an average Cuban. Papa kept the place in business, according to a dapper bartender in white slacks and a red jacket.

Bartender: "He entered, he sat, and he drank sometimes ten or twelve daiquiris, reading the newspaper."

The author drinks a mojito amid photos of Hemingway

And he's still here...in the form of a commemorative bust marking his regular seat at the bar. And the eponymous cocktail.

Bartender: "It kept his name, 'Papa Hemingway,' in honor of him. He'd ask for a 'Papa,' which is a double daiquiri...a glass of water without sugar, a bit of juice, and a double shot of rum."

Like La Bodeguita, La Floridita makes the most of its famous patron. Papa pictures dominate the wall near the door: Hemingway with Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy. The photos make the place seem exclusive...a haven for movie stars. But that's another myth--revisionist history.

As Hemingway wrote in a letter from Havana, La Floridita was more like a human Noah's Ark.

Hemingway: "There are... Lions, Elks, Moose, Shriners, beauty contest winners, characters who have gotten into a little trouble and pass a note in by the doorman, characters who get killed next week, the FBI, former FBI, occasionally your bank manager and two other guys, not to mention your Cuban friends."

Hemingway at Finca Vigia

After years living in the Hotel Ambos Mundos, Hemingway bought a house nine miles outside the city, Finca Vigia. Watchtower Farm. Secluded by a tropical garden, the property provided plenty of room for Papa's four dogs and 57 cats. The modest house is a museum now. Inside, floor to ceiling books...8,000 of them. The heads of big horned mammals--safari trophies --stare blankly from the walls in almost every room. This is where Hemingway wrote. A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream and...The Old Man and the Sea.

In 1954, that novella about Cuba and fishing won him the Nobel. And in a great p.r. move that cemented his place in folklore, he gave the prize medal to a local church, a kind of souvenir.

From Hemingway's house, it was just 45 minutes to the Gulf Stream and the best fishing he'd ever seen. More than a sport, fishing was religion for Papa. An archetypal cycle of life and death.

Hemingway: "You were born to be a fisherman as the fish was born to be a fish. San Pedro was a fisherman as was the father of the great DiMaggio....You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after."

The author with the "old man," Gregorio Fuentes

That's a sentiment Gregorio Fuentes may have felt once upon a time. Some say he was the model for the fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea. He looks the part...right out of the pages of the book.

Hemingway: "Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated."

Fuentes was the captain of Hemingway's boat, Pilar, and his close friend. Their birthdays were a few of days apart, and they always celebrated with a bottle of rum. When Fuentes raises his glass this July, he'll be 102.

I found him with his grandson at his house near the ocean, listening to a soap opera on the radio and smoking a cigar.

Fuentes: "Yes, Papa Hemingway. I knew him starting in World War I....He spoke Spanish better than I do."

Fuentes is a living landmark on the Hemingway tour. Curiosity seekers pay money to talk with him and take pictures. I paid 20 bucks and tried to get beyond the myth, to find out if he was really the old man from The Old Man and the Sea.

Absolutely, declared the grandson.

Grandson: "In reality those events happened to my grandfather before he met Hemingway, when he was younger."

He recounts a tale familiar to Hemingway readers...a fish bigger than the boat, killed in an epic struggle, only to be eaten by sharks.

Grandson: "And he was rundown, tired; he didn't have any strength. He was all alone in a small boat filled with water about one foot deep."

It was a great story. But it's probably not true. Hemingway biographers say Fuentes was not the man immortalized in fiction.

Browse the Savvy Traveler's Cuban Literature bookshelf.

So perhaps this Old Man is just an old man. But then again, does it really matter? Because what is a writer if not a good liar, and what good is a fisherman who does not fib?

And so Fuentes signed my copy of The Old Man and the Sea. A pen in one hand, the cigar in the other, burning the title page.

Truth or fiction...it all boils down to a good travel story. And after all, a good story is one of the best souvenirs you can bring back from the road.

In Havana, Cuba, I'm Jeff Tyler for The Savvy Traveler.