Originally Posted by
opie
--THE HONDURAS ADVENTURE--
SPHINCTER EXCERCISES
When leaving Miami I didn’t bring along a snack.I was meeting my partners Rodrigo and Frank for dinner and was preparing myself for some of Honduras finest cusine (what a suprise I got). Forgot about the time difference which is two hours and before we arrived in Honduras I was at the point of wanting to eat my belt.
Since both San Pedero, where we had a stopover and Danli are in valleys a touchdown in either is a cause for concern. The runways are not as long as they should be and landing seems like a controlled crash. The plane comes in at an extreme angle and once the wheels touch the tarmac the engines are reversed immediately. Coming in to Tegucigalpa runway it almost seems like you are looking into windows of houses that are built within a couple of hundred feet of the runway.
THE THIRD WORLD
Thursday at 5 P.M. I arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and after a 5 dollar bribe to the customs and immigration officials I was called to the head of a line of about 50 people (sort of made me feel guilty). The five dollars saves you about an hour, plus a lot bullshit. This was all handled by our agent there. Naturally my suitcase never made it to Honduras.
Picked up by our driver Jorge who didn't speak a word of English and I only knew three words of Spanish and headed for Danli. Noticed that everywhere on the streets there were armed soldiers, which concerned me. I learned later that there really isn't that much crime in Honduras because of the armed soldiers and security guards. Even a small company like ours has to have armed guards 24 hrs a day. Everywhere you looked there was extreme poverty. Tegu is the capitol city, yet there is no traffic controls evident. It's sort a game of who has the biggest balls. I was surprised that we never saw a wreck. Small kids coming up to the car begging for a "lamp" (18.8 lamps to the dollar).
The streets were in such condition that they were almost impassable. More taxi's than private cars. The taxi's are communal and don't necessarily take you directly to your destination, it just depends on there the other passengers are going.
THE PAN AMERICAN HIGHWAY
Apparently was built in the 30's and nothing has been done to it since then. Potholes that you could get lost in. Little 12 year old kids filling potholes with clay which the rains then wash out. Burro's, cattle and horses, all of them so lean that you could count their ribs as they meandered across the highway. The trip to Danli was all uphill and down hill on the two lane Pan American Highway. There were places where a whole lane of the highway had slidden off the mountain side. The driver talked to me in Spanish as he careened up and down the mountain for the three hour trip into Danli. It was one of the most exciting drives that I have ever been involved in.
DANLI
We passed the Padron and Caribe Cigar companies on the way in and they both had armed guards in front of the factories.
The poverty level in Danli is much worse than Tegu I wish all my grandchildren could make the trip. Maybe they would learn to appreciate what they have in the US. We navigated a dirt street with enormous holes which caused the car to bottom out. Came around a corner and there was Tobaco's J Marta Perez with Afterburner and our armed guard sitting on a chair on the "sidewalk" talking to the locals. Bruce had not run all the local girls thru the carwash as he had promised, since there was no car wash.
Walked in to the factory and it was quite a bit more than I expected. Large building, broken up into several work and storage areas. Upstairs is a nice roofed patio, which seems to always have a nice breeze. Marta, Gael, Bruce the other 2 partners and myself sat around on the patio until nine, smoking fresh rolled Cigars. They enjoying the local beer, while I drank bottled water. The local kids knew that there were Gringos around and hung around hoping for a hand out. Bruce was feeding them and the local homeless guy lamps. It was really funny. Bruce would give this guy some money, he would go around the corner, drink it up in cheap booze and find his way back to Bruce. We went back to the hotel at about nine, had nice sandwiches there and agreed to meet at 8:30 the next morning.
Looking forward to a long hard shower, after a 16 hour journey, two hour business meeting and production tour, I turned on the hot water and got a trickle. No water pressure at all. My mouthpiece for Sleep Apnea had been in my suitcase and I had a miserable night. The hotel was better than I expected, other than the water issue and the fact that the room telephone didn't work.
After leaving the hotel the next morning, we made our way over the potholes and gorges to the factory, We met all the employees and watched them at work producing "world class Cigars".
Marta (our plant manager)is a lovely lady but I had rather work under a slave driver. She insists that every Cigar be perfect and supervised everything with an eagle eye for any imperfections. Although all of our people are experienced Cigar people, Marta retrained all of them to do it her way. We lost some of the original employees, simply because they couldn't conform to her way of making Cigars.
Our workers are paid a bonus to raise their salary above what the other manufacturers pay. This way we get the cream of the crop and it only add a penny or so to manufacturing cost.
Leaving the factory we proceeded to the lawyers office to take care of the legal aspects of the new company. I certainly wish we could afford a lawyer who has air conditioning in his office. We had to produce our passports, sign the papers and affix our fingerprint to the legal documents. I almost fainted when Rodrigo asked the lawyer what his fee was and he replied 4,000 . It was a hell of a relief when Rodrigo quickly told us that it was Lamps, which amounted to 211.00 U,S. Rod also told us that lawyers in Honduras earn about 100.00 a week U.S.
We had to wait for a couple of hours on the paperwork and went to the local open air market where we had lunch. There were several dirty little eating places and each one served a different meal. There were virtually no choices and you basically had to eat whatever they were serving as a meal that day. These places are so dirty that if they were in the states, you wouldn't go near them. There was the cutest four year old kid in the restaurant who was a real ham, Every time someone picked up a camera he would break out into a big grin.
At this point I realized that I would need some of my medication, which had been in my lost suitcase.
We went into a little drug store and were able to purchase everything that I needed. First drug store I ever was that you could buy just one pill. If you wanted stronger drugs, such as codeine containing drugs, the pharmacist would write you a prescription. Apparently no one in Honduras uses anti perspirant because None of the stores carry it. In addition to medicine and clothes, my suitcase contained the mouthpiece (for my sleep apnea).
We spent the rest of the afternoon in the factory watching the "Rollers" and "Buncheros" do their thing. I had always thought the roller was the most important person but I learned that it is the Buncheros who manage the blend and place the leaf in such a way that the Cigars burns evenly. Marta has trained the Rollers to cap the Cigars her way and it is the finest cap that I have ever seen.
We ran a couple of video cameras there and got a lot of footage which we plan to edit and record to DVD, if anyone is interested.
The people in the factory take a great amount of pride in their work and watch you very keenly when you smoke a Cigar in order to see how you react to it. If you have never smoked a Cigar, straight from the rolling table, you have really missed a treat. We are currently rolling LaLuna Natural Fuertes and the V2 for Laluna Cigars International, both which are excellent smokes. We will need to lay down in the extraction room in order to get the excess humidity out of them. By the time that has been accomplished we should have our export license, which we need in order to ship to the U.S.
Bruce is accompanying Gael into Nicaragua on Monday to purchase tobacco and make other contacts there. My plans to make the trip were botched because of the lost luggage.
MARIO ANDRETTI
On Saturday morning there were torrential rains and we were 45 minutes late in starting out for the airport. It had to be the most exciting ride of my life. Jorge was passing cars on blind curves on the mountains, sometimes making two lanes into three, my sphincter muscle got an excellent workout.
Because of business that had to be taken care of I didn’t get to spend the time with Bruce that I would have liked. On the next trip I plan to stay a few days longer.
My suitcase is still lost and I am trying to recover from an 18 hour day on Saturday.
If any of you would like to see a nice Cigar factory in operation, you are certainly welcome to visit us at any time. I can guarantee you that it will be an adventure that you will remember for a lifetime.
WE WILL HAVE 200 BUNDLES COMING IN BY AIR ON AUG 4TH.
