mementomori
New Member
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2008
- Messages
- 186
Hello everybody ! I just returned from Mexico , yes the sun was a complete beauty , fabulous food , extremely nice people . All inclusive , typical mexican resort , america's playground . Off course lots of beach vendors with glass top cohiba bullshit but those guys are not today's problem , i want to warn people who are new to cuban's and who travel to resorts outside of USA . Well once cigar lover gets outside US he pretty much thinks " i am in cuban cigar heaven ". Most of them got some info from friends - not to buy fakes from street ,beach vendors-basically your friends warn you and point you to buying the real thing from the hotel bar or designed smoking rooms . Yes ... they are right , that seems to be the safest way to get the real thing ... paying high dollars and enjoy the truth cuban tobacco . I was staying in one of the Apple Vacation appointed monster hotels Iberostar . You probably all know the name of that chain .On my 3rd day i went with my wife to one of the bars and decided to smoke fuente anejo 77 that i brought with me in a travel humidor . Main bar was located in the center of hotel was air conditioned , in order to smoke you had to enter cigar-cigarettes smoking room with comfortable chairs and big glass humidor . I took a look on the large selection of cuban cigars and when i saw cohibas i was speechless for a moment . First look and i knew it . They where fakes . How do i know ? I'm an expert in cuban cigars i am originally from Europe and use to work as cigar seller there . I'm still spending at least 3-4 months every year in Europe and sampling cigars in different countries . Did hotel sell fakes , yes and no. I asked the bartender to open the humidor and after handling few cohiba siglo 2 and 4 i asked him why they sell fakes . He played stupid and ask me how do i know that these are fakes . I told him that i use to work for cigar dealers in Europe ( i have foreign accent while speaking english so i could not be american in hes eyes , why i'm pointing about being american or not , because they know americans in most cases can't differ real thing from fake , in the other hand many european people can't either ). I took the boxes out of the humidor and started to remove all cigars and boom...only 2 3 first layers were filled with fakes , all other in the bottom of the box were the real deal. He said that his customer are mostly americans and they never complain . He asked me how long will i stay in the resort , he wanted eagerly know when will i leave . He promised me to contact his manager about this problem . I said i will contact him ,he ask me not to. Well looks like they run a little scam putting fake glass top quality "cohibas" on the top of the real thing and make off american citizens little money ,which probably is a big deal for them , since 20 dollars a pop it's at least what they make per workday . Next day i arrived to check the humidor again . Same bartender ,was practically running toward me when he saw me , greeting me with big smile . He said " I talked to my manager ".I took a look inside the humi and all fakes where gone , all they left were the real things. In my opinion the manager and the stuff are running this scam together so next time you visit places like this be aware , dig inside the box or don't buy cohibas at all. All other brands ( i went through everything , were legitimate ). This year has been the slowest for them and tips are not there , so some will try to make money on fake cigars. I saw the bartender who was acting very nervous when i told him about fakes. He started talking about how good this job is , how many kids he has and how expansive life is. He knew i made him. I did not go over his head that day , i had no heart to do it .These are poor people and i don't want nobody to loose their job and if some uneducated smokers loose their 20 dollars for fakes , well...too bad but they can live with it . For all people in this forum : BE CAREFUL AND PASS THAT TO YOUR FRIENDS TRAVELING TO RESORTS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Best regards to everybody , i hope this will help.