Vinales - Escape to the mountains

We took the bus from Havana to Vinales which takes around 3 hours, once you are out of the city it is not too long before you can see the mountains stretching along the side of the motorway.  Vinales has both a national park and a small town which sits in a valley surrounded by the limescale mogotes.

The entire town is set up for the visiting tourists although has not been turned into an unsightly tourist resort.  When you arrive on the bus the locals swarm the bus, they are either Casa owners who are there to pick up guests or try to tempt visitors who do not already have a Casa booked.  We had booked Casa Sol Coral on line before arriving and Fran the owner was there to great us.  First impressions on arrival at the Casa were that we were impressed.  The bedroom was large, clean and had a huge double bed and it had a beautiful shower room.  Nury, Frans wife greeted us and thankfully spoke some English which was good as we were struggling to speak with Fran.

Our lovely clean and modern bedroom

Casa Coral

Nury soon brought us some lovely fresh Guava juice and we agreed that we would eat dinner in the Casa and Nury was happy to make Vegetarian dishes.  Dinner was great that evening, we were given soup and plantain chip as a starter and then beans and rice for our main meal, followed by fruit for dessert all of which was great for us.  We also met with Claudia and Peter a lovely German couple who were also staying at the Casa and had been in Cuba for over 2 weeks.  What was even better for us was they spoke perfect English so we got to chat with them all night.  It turned out that Peter and Claudia also sailed so along with our trip to Cuba we had lots to talk about.

Next day after a 4 course breakfast we had agreed to take a walking excursion though the National Park, it was difficult to get hold of a map for the National Park and you felt that your only option was a guided tour.  Funny that our tour was in English but our guides English was a little limited but he was able to point out all the plants in the park, as we trotted along behind him in the very muddy farmers field.

 

Amanda trying to keep up with the guide

A large amount of the farmers crop is tobacco and this is at various stages of growth and there are various different farmers.  We also saw beans, bananas, coffee plants, sweet potato, yuka, lemons and guava.   

Fields of tobacco plants

Our first stop on the walk was a cave in one of the mogotes, we clambered down inside the cave which was quite small but still interesting but seemed like it was also a chance for the various guides to get together for a chat, there were 2 other horse riding tours at the cave at the same time.

A muddy Amanda in the cave

We were then onto the coffee plantation, this was a small shack in the middle of a field and although we were glad of the shelter as it had started to rain, this is also a chance for you to buy a drink you probably don’t want.  Mark tried the local coffee which was super strong and Amanda had a guava juice,this was around 10.30 and there were plenty of tourists already sampling the rum!

The views in the Park were quite spectacular even with the low lying cloud and the occasional rain.

Stunning view

Rainy day cross the tobacco fields

Next stop was the tobacco farmer where not only does he growth the tobacco but he dries it and makes cigars but only a small proportion of this crop belongs to him as 90% belongs to the government and is made into cigars in a large factory.  It was interesting to see the leaves drying and find out a bit more about the process, for example the are kept moist with natural products such as lemon, orange and honey, even more interesting was that when they take the leaves to roll them into cigars they remove the stalk that runs down the middles and this contains the nicotine.  He them demonstrated rolling the actual cigar, he was keen for us to try the cigar but we both declined.

Tobacco leave drying

Entrance to the tobacco house

That night we shared another traditional Cuban meal prepared by Nury, it was nice that she managed to cater for our vegetarian needs with lots of rice, beans, salad and various oher bits and pieces like fried Plantain. We also shared another interesting evening with Peter and Claudia, it was nice to hear about some of their other travels.

Unfortunately that the next day we were both suffering, we think it was probably the Mojito at the tobacco plant but we ere not keen to be doing very much although exploring the village and watching the world go by was just a perfect way to relax.  On our way around the village we watched the ox and carts deliver the building material for a house, it was amazing to see the drivers manoeuvre the ox’s backward and forward to get in position, they were surprising well trained.

We also had a short walk our of the village just to admire the countryside, we also came across a beautiful garden where we watched the butterflies and hummigbirds.

 

More wonderful countryside

Pretty garden

On our walk back we also made a new friend, the cutest little puppy had been following two guys walking out but had decided he was now our friend and started to head back to town with us, he wouldn’t leave Mark’s side. It was both sad and relief when he found a friendly dog to play with when reached town, sad to see so many stray dogs roaming the streets.

Cute new friend

Mark and his new buddy

During the afternoon we were both still struggling so we headed to the local hotel just up the hill from our hotel and spent the afternoon reading our books, admiring the scenery, chatting to the chickens and even managed a beer on our dodgy tummies. 

Mountain view over Vinales

Chickens

Great view

Mark relaxing

Our final evening we spent alone at dinner but another nice meal prepared by Nury and at least we could still manage to eat.

The next day it was up early and ready for the long bus journey back to Veradero, this did mean an hours wait to change bus in Havana, so we left at 7am and were not back to the boat until about 4pm, long day which was not ideal as we still not recovered but some nice scenery and we had a lovely trip.

A tobacco house along the way