Why I was MIA – Part 1

I’ve been missing in action lately so I thought it would only be fair to tell you all what I’ve been doing all this time. And since it’s a cigar website, I would have to mix in some cigar info too! haha. So here we are, back again in the Great White North. Apparently there was some awesome weather up here while I was away on my Honeymoon but it’s been nothing but rain since I got back! Grrr….! lol So today I decided I’d write up something different for everyone and chat a little about my cigar experiences while I’ve been away. I didn’t do anything crazy but I made sure I got to enjoy a cigar every now and then and visited a few shops along my route. So here’s how it went.

2 Days before I tied the knot I had a great cigar gathering with about 10 friends. Not all of them are big on cigars but there were a few. So I pulled out some mild sticks for the newbies and kept some of the good sticks for those I knew would enjoy them. I happened to grab myself a Cohiba Behike 52 (Which Tony reviewed here) that I had been saving for just this occasion and damn was it ever good. I paired it with a super smooth scotch which I had also been saving, the Macallan Select Oak. I highly recommend both of these! To finish off the night I also enjoyed a Drew Estate Undercrown and a Montecristo No. 2 which are staples in my humidor and still darn good. But hard to compare to the Behike…

The wedding day was mostly a blur and flew by very quickly. I didn’t have time to sneak out for a cigar but I did make sure they were part of the day. I had ordered a bunch of cigars from our friend Paul Maldonado and gave them out to our guests. Each cigar had my wonderful wife’s creative touch as well with a nice ribbon and little label that said “Compliments of the new Mr. and Mrs. T”. The whole day and evening went wonderfully smooth and without any problems at all, a great day for sure!

Now for the fun part, the next morning at 7am we were on our way to the airport! I made sure to pack my travel humidor with a few sticks cause I didn’t want to get stuck without any cigars while I was away. Our first stop was the island of Antigua in the Caribbean. The island itself has some great scenery but apart from the cruiseship port there isn’t many shops that tourists would visit so we stuck to the resort for the most part. Now I’m very glad I brought my own cigars because they were selling Cuban’s for about 4x the retail price, which is even more than they would cost me in Canada!
But you can’t really complain when this is the view you have at your table every morning for breakfast!

So while I was there this is what I had from my Travel humidor. I didn’t pack any Cuban’s because we’d be hitting U.S. soil and I didn’t want to deal with a Customs issue. The first night in Antigua I celebrated with a Jaime Garcia Reserve Especial. I really love this cigar and it comes at such a great price, can’t go wrong with these.

I didn’t have a cigar every night simply because we were having fun doing other things but the resort was very open to letting you smoke pretty much anywhere on the grounds. So I also enjoyed the odd smaller cigar such as a couple Illusione ~mk~ sticks and some little Tatuaje Verocu 5’s that I happened to bring along. The night pictured below consisted of a Don Pepin Garcia Blue Label paired with some Nachos + Cheese and my staple drink for the trip, a Cuba Libre (a.k.a. Rum & Coke). And yes, I had it in a mug because I ran out of glasses in the room! lol

The next cigar I snuck in my travel humidor is one of my recent favorites, the Drew Estate Undercrown. Of course, I have myself some more Rum & Coke here, El Dorado seemed to be the standard of this resort.

That was it for the cigars I snapped pictures of at the resort. The next leg of the trip brought us to San Juan where we would be catching our cruiseship for a tour of the Caribbean. We didn’t have time to shop around San Juan when we got there as we had to head straight to the ship. At this point I was running low on cigars and starting to get worried! lol The first night while we were watching the ship disembark I squeezed in an Illusione ~88~ and I think I only had 1 cigar left now.

The first stop on our tour was the island of St. Thomas which is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. This was a really nice island with lots of clean shops and friendly people, definitely a place we’d consider going back to for a longer stay. While my new wife went crazy in all the jewelry stores I kept my eyes peeled for cigars. There were a couple duty free shops that I ended up grabbing some cigars at but the prices were kinda high so I only grabbed a few. I picked up a couple Padron 2000’s that were a little over $8 each and some Arturo Fuente Chateau’s that were in the $10 range. Selection wasn’t that great on this island either…

I have a bunch more to tell but it seems this post is already getting pretty long so be on the look out for part 2 coming up later this week! Let us know if you guys enjoy this type of post and we could chat more about our adventures with cigars whenever we have them!