La Aurora Part 2

La Aurora workers

As mentioned in my first post on the La Aurora cigar factory, the workers all smoked cigars. They seemed quite oblivious to us milling around and taking photos of them, so I think they get a lot of tours.

Displays from La Aurora

The tour included a lot of history about the making of the factory, how it grew and what it is like today. If you would like more information on this tour, click on La Aurora cigar factory.

The tour guide at the factory, Eugenio, was awesome, but the best person of all was our tour guide for the day, Chucky. He was fun. He was entertaining and he was kind. More about Chucky later. 

La Aurora Puros (Cigars)

La Aurora Cigar Factory

Our best tour on our Christmas cruise on the Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam was called Santiago Insider. It was to the oldest city in the Americas, Santiago de las Caballeros from Amber Cove, Dominican Republic. When I read the information on it, I was expecting to go to a little old town. What is actually there is a bustling city of a million people. 

La Aurora entrance

The highlight of the tour was the La Aurora Cigar Factory. In the entrance, there were some old vehicles they have used over the years. The tour was so interesting, as we walked from phase to phase of the making of cigars. The only difficult part for me was the perk of working there is you get to smoke as many cigars as you like. So all the employees and also our tour guests were puffing away. I had to ask to be let out of the room. It was so smoky, I couldn't breathe.

Equipment for making the cigars

Cigar maker

My favorite part of the cigar factory was watching the workers in the break room.

Break room La Aurora