Employees prepare boxes of cigars, on February 27, 2014 at the H. Upmann cigar factory in Havana. The production of Cuban cigars experienced an 8% growth in 2013 adding 447 million dollars to the Cuban economy. The XVI Havana Cigar Festival is running in Cuba with the presentation of the best Cuban cigars. (AFP)
A thick cloud of smoke hung in the air at Havana's annual cigar festival, where some 200 smokers took part in a novel contest to produce the longest unbroken ash.
Many of the participants, foreigners as well as Cubans, finished with throbbing headaches but smiling faces, laughing and clapping as their smoked-down stogies were transformed into prodigious pillars of ash.
Each smoker started out with a 17.8-centimetre (seven-inch) H Upmann label cigar, an esteemed Cuban brand.
The challenge was to produce one intact ash that came as close as possible to the length of the cigar at the start of the competition.
Contestants sat with heads tilted backwards to prevent the ash from crumbling onto the table -- or onto their faces.
In between puffs, they held their stogies as close as possible to vertical, in a sometimes futile effort to keep them in one piece.
"It was exhausting," said April Angeloni from the United States, whose impressive showing, measuring 13.9 centimetres, was nevertheless some three centimeters too short to win.
The prize went Friday to Olivia Terry, a Cuban journalist who managed to puff through 16.9 centimeters before the ash broke.
"I did not expect such a result," Terry said, adding she just joined for fun.
"It's much harder than it looked," said another participant, Tamara Teixo, a Spaniard who markets Cuban cigars in Russia.
Many of the participants, foreigners as well as Cubans, finished with throbbing headaches but smiling faces, laughing and clapping as their smoked-down stogies were transformed into prodigious pillars of ash.
Each smoker started out with a 17.8-centimetre (seven-inch) H Upmann label cigar, an esteemed Cuban brand.
The challenge was to produce one intact ash that came as close as possible to the length of the cigar at the start of the competition.
Contestants sat with heads tilted backwards to prevent the ash from crumbling onto the table -- or onto their faces.
In between puffs, they held their stogies as close as possible to vertical, in a sometimes futile effort to keep them in one piece.
"It was exhausting," said April Angeloni from the United States, whose impressive showing, measuring 13.9 centimetres, was nevertheless some three centimeters too short to win.
The prize went Friday to Olivia Terry, a Cuban journalist who managed to puff through 16.9 centimeters before the ash broke.
"I did not expect such a result," Terry said, adding she just joined for fun.
"It's much harder than it looked," said another participant, Tamara Teixo, a Spaniard who markets Cuban cigars in Russia.
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