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.
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Our lovely clean and modern bedroom |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Stunning view |
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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.
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Tobacco leave drying |
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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.
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More wonderful countryside |
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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.
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Cute new friend |
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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.
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Mountain view over Vinales |
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Chickens |
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Great view |
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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.
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A tobacco house along the way |
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