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On the Thursday of the festival, Hunter's and Frankau held a tasting for retailers in the El Aljibe restaurant. I described El Aljibe to someone as the "McDonalds" of Havana, not the best food in the world but you always know what you're going to get. Chicken, rice and beans. In fairness it's always good, plus a decent little cigar shop to the side where finds can be had. Good wine cellar too. Anyway, needless to say I wasn't invited to the tasting of their new Por Larranaga Sobresaliente so, after a trip to the Hemingway house in the morning, we decided to go to the restaurant anyway as we were meeting up with the Foxes etc. later to go to a few events that evening. As luck would have it there was a band on in the restaurant that afternoon. I sent them over to the Hunters table to play "Guantanamera" as loudly as possible during Simon Chase's speech. They were happy to do so. "Senor, Simon Chase has left" "OK, it's for Sean Croley then" "Sean Croley? OK, who will I say it's from?" "Andy Ry.., I mean Percy Covitz", Percy one of our fellow travellers at our table. Anyway, we had a lovely afternoon, Stuart had dug a box of early 80s Davidoff Chateau Haut Brion out of Jersey, some of which we shared as our private tasting. As luck would have it I saw Nino and his friend Frank pop into the shop on their way to their lunch at a different place. Always good to see Nino and happy to share out a few cigars. As for the cigar, it was very very good. Performed very nicely, flavours of sweet aged tea and some soft florals. Very nice. Great balance and burn. even after a week of all kinds of oral abuse they showed great flavours. Sharing them with me were Percy, from Dublin, Amir's girlfriend Caroline (lovely) and our friends Rick and Christine from Kansas. Another lovely afternoon. The band Some of our table, Caroline, Christine, me and Percy Por Larranaga Davidoff Percy and Rick, good guys. Caroline Nino, Rob, Frank and myself.