We hitched a ride out of Central Havana to the seaside town made famous by Ernest Hemingway to research a couple of articles I’m working on. The driver barreled up a dusty road speckled with potholes, noting, “This is the best road in town,” and dropped us off on a forlorn corner, pointing left, and saying, “The pier’s down there.” We headed past houses in varying degrees of disrepair; when the hurricanes roll in off the sea, Cojimar often bears the brunt of nature’s force. “Es un pueblo destrozado,” one resident said, acknowledging the ghostly trail of destruction left behind by past torments of wind and rain.

While Brayan took photos of a statue of Hemingway, elevated on a column in a sad-looking pavilion with peeling paint, I walked along the sea wall and tried to imagine how Cojimar must have appeared through Ernest’s eyes. But I was distracted by detritus: used and discarded packages of Vigor condoms, broken bottles of Havana Club rum, and a puzzling amount of rotting fruit: watermelons, pineapples, and coconuts, bloated with sun and salt water, bobbing up against the rocks. Vultures circled overhead, hunting for their next meal. I sat down on the sea wall and watched two police officers work on jump starting their “jeepy” while a man who truly looked like Hemingway incarnate cycled around the block in slow looping circles, going nowhere in particular. Just 15 minutes out of Havana, Cojimar felt light years away.

Determined to know Cojimar, we pressed on, stopping for fruit salad and characteristically bad pizzas at an open air cafeteria with no seats. We trudged on and stumbled into Las Terrazas, Hemingway’s favorite restaurant and the sole sign we’d seen so far that Cojimar ever enjoyed glory days. The only customers, we chose the best table overlooking the bay and ordered Cuban espresso.

There had to be something more.

We walked on to the little stretch of beach, a pathetic crescent littered with spent toiletry containers, a foot from a mannequin, and enough flip flops to fill a shoe store. We crossed a rickety draw bridge and came upon an old underground military tunnel and an expanse of shore, rough with volcanic rock.

And then I saw the chicken. And another. And then another. And a guinea. And a duck. Bones. Feathers. And lots of bird feet. Broken pottery and dinner plates. And more fruit. “Brujeria,” Brayan said, referring to the practice of offerings made to saints and orishas by adherents of Santeria, a syncretic spiritual tradition. Offerings are made for all sorts of reasons: to ask the saints to ensure good health, safe journeys, protection from the evil eye, and intervention for all other types of tough times.

I don’t know what happens after we die, but if there is such a phenomenon as reincarnation, there’s one thing I know for sure: I don’t want to come back as a bird in Cuba. Especially in Cojimar.