Hemingway’s Cuban islet of choice to welcome tourists

Megano de Casiguas Key, a tiny islet of the Cuban archipelago where celebrated American writer Ernest Hemingway used to sail to aboard his El Pilar vessel, will soon become a brand-new tourist attraction beginning next year.

The small isle that Hemingway dubbed Paradise Key during one of his many marine adventures around Cuba was –as Heminway’s late skipper Gregorio Fuentes once put it- a source of inspiration for the Nobel Prize-winning author. According to Mr. Fuentes’s recollection, Hemingway even sat on the key to write part of his novels.

The sail to Megano Key –some 68 miles west of Havana and off the waters north of Pinar del Rio province- will now be the newest choice of Cuba’s tourism group Rumbos S.A.

The trip tees off from Cayo Jutia, a cay that lies in a deep-water fishing area and is hooked up to Megano Key through a dirt road of slab stones built on the sea –known locally as predraplen.