JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

When you arrive at Jose Marti International Airport, there are no jetways; you walk down the steps of the plane and into the terminal. Immediately, you make connection with the ground of a new country.

For seven days, our tour guide Roberto and our driver Paqui were our almost-constant companions. Roberto has a brother who lives in the U.S., and his mother is planning to visit Miami this month. Most members of our tour group got the feeling Roberto would be visiting in the near future.

Our group of 10 with Kansas City connections was joined by several people from other parts of the country, including Rima (left), a social worker from Brooklyn, and her mother Susan, a family-advocate attorney in Woodstock, NY.

…and Bill, a retired Navy and commercial airline pilot from San Diego.

Four of us stayed over two days to see more of Havana and environs. I took this last Sunday, when we spent part of the morning and early afternoon on a windswept beach at Guanabo, a town about 12 miles east of Havana…That’s Patty on the right; Martha next to her, and Martha’s sister, Jane, who lives in New Mexico.

During the formal tour, musical groups entertained us at many lunches and dinners. This group was the first we encountered — on our first day in Havana Vieja — and one of the best.

Like the musicians, street performers work for tips.

The Cuban flag added color to this street in Havana Vieja — Old Havana — the heart of the city and the main tourist district.

In an unbelievable coincidence, we happened upon this old marble staircase — a photo of which has hung in the hallway of our home the last two or three years. I bought the photo from a local photographer who had visited and photographed Havana…I was dumbstruck after Patty came to an abrupt stop on our walk through Old Havana, pointed to the right and said, “Look!” And there it was, the same staircase.

The Malecon, the sea wall that extends along Havana’s shore line for several miles, is a natural and popular gathering place for tourists and locals alike. From the nearby hotels, you can hear the sound of happy voices emanating from the Malecon on calm Gulf Coast nights.

We got out into the countryside, too. These red-barked trees are facetiously called Tourist Trees because they resemble many tourists who mire themselves in all-inclusive Cuban resorts and burn their skins to a crisp at the resort swimming pools, never venturing outside the resort confines. (We stayed at one of those places two nights and saw a bunch of Canadians who did exactly that.)

At an organic farm, we saw what rich dirt looks like.

…and the people who work it.

…and how they till the soil.

Cuba used to export enormous amounts of sugarcane to Russia in exchange for oil. That came to a crashing halt after the U.S.S.R. collapsed in 1991. Sugarcane, coffee and tobacco remain are still some of the country’s largest crops. Here an organic farm worker strips a sugarcane stalk.

Ernest Hemingway had a rich history in Cuba, of course, before committing suicide in Idaho in 1961. In 1940, he purchased Finca Vigia, or “Lookout House,” several miles outside of Havana, and he lived there off and on until his death.

The residence, which sits on 15 acres, is now a museum. Visitors cannot go inside, but they can look through the windows.

Hemingway’s 38-foot fishing boat Pilar — the nickname of his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer — is on the property.

A bustling, relatively modern town we visited in southwestern Cuba, on the Caribbean side of the island, was Cienfuegos.

Many young people in Cienfuegos were fashionably dressed.

This fabric store was doing a brisk business.

Fifty miles southeast of Cienfuegos is Trinidad, a charming town with cobblestone streets and a lively street life.

The busiest place in town was the Telepunto store, where people were lined up, presumably to buy phone-time cards.

The Trinidad Post Office.

This guy wasn’t begging, but I gave him a Cuban 25-cent piece in exchange for this photo.

And wasn’t it inevitable that we would run into a Royals fan somewhere in Cuba? Cubans’ favorite Royal, naturally, is Kendrys Morales, a native of Cuba, who escaped the country on a raft in June 2004. Cuba’s loss was our gain. Opening day is less than two months away!