Viñales

Escaping the chaos of Havana, we headed a few hours west to Viñales. The main road to Viñales was pretty quiet, with very few cars on the road, in part because of the sanctions leading to fuel shortages. There were some long queues at some of the petrol stations.

Viñales Valley is famous for its beautiful landscape and traditional methods for growing tobacco. We had another great host that made us breakfast every morning on the rooftop overlooking the town and the beautiful hills. We explored the area by hiring a taxi to take us around for the day. He turned up in an old school taxi drove us around the gorgeous countryside. We visited a cave where escaped slaves hid back in the colonial times, but is now a bar. Then we visited a tobacco farm, where a man showed us how to roll a cigar and smoke it the Cuban way. As fun as it was I don't think it's a skill that I'll be using any time soon! Then we went off to see a cliff that had been painted with a mural with dinosaurs sometime in the 1960's. It felt a bit like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel of what to show us at this point! But we finished up at a miradore (viewpoint) overlooking the valley so the day ended with a high point!

Viñales town was pretty small and quiet, we wandered the streets and looked in some of the shops and market. People definitely moved at a slower pace here than in Havana! We also enjoyed some of the excellent cocktails, we loved anything rum based like mojitos, daquris, Pina/mango coladas. One evening there was a street party going on, with food and drinks being sold in the street along with music. There were also some pretty old looking fairground rides, including a small rollercoaster and a pirate ship ride. I'm sure they were perfectly safe but I didn't feel brave enough to take a ride!

We headed back to Havana for one more day before flying out. I loved Cuba, it was a beautiful and fascinating place, but going through some hard times. It was also unbearably hot and humid, I was so eager to be sipping mojitos with Mel that we forgot to check the weather report! But I would love to visit again at a cooler time of year 😅Lue lisää