Day 16 - Vinales

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Valle de Vinales is to Cuba as Pai is to Thailand. It’s a hub for travellers rather than tourists and its not-so-attractive town centre is surrounded by rural, self-sustainable dwellings with some of the country’s most spectacular views. Undulating fields of lush greens and deep red terracotta plots surround the steep walls of the towering, limestone mogotes. It’s different to Pai, though. The people seem better off. The houses are bigger and made of concrete rather than wood and mud huts. The plots of land seem more organised. And there’s a serious lack of marijuana. Maybe I’m just reading too much in to it already, but it seems here, for the rural, poor people that Che wanted to help so much – the campesinos – socialism has improved their lives.



With half a day left, we asked our new host, Juana if she could arrange some horse riding for us. Hosts at casas seem to be able to arrange pretty much anything for you – at the market rate, naturally. As well as making life easier for us, it also helps distribute some of those CUCs to the rest of the community, tax-free. Once I’d recovered my camera, which I’d left on the back seat of our bus, and grabbed a pizza from one of the hole-in-the-wall street cafés for 10 pesos (40p) each, we were ready for our 3 hour trek. Pepito, our guide, charged a reasonable $5 CUCs per person, per hour, although one of those hours was spent sipping mojitos and smoking local hand-rolled cigars with his mate who must make a tidy living from Pepito’s work. It was actually pretty cool seeing how a cigar is made. All Cuban cigar's are hand-rolled. The higher quality ones are packed with un-torn tabocco leaves from the 3rd, 4th and 5th layer of leaves on the tree. So packed, that when you squeeze them, they deform symmetrically and when you smoke them the ash doesn't fall until it's a good 5-10cm long. Technically you should wait a couple of days for freshly rolled cigars to dry out a little before storing them in cedarwood to maintain them at the perfect humidity level...but we just went and smoke them anyway.



The route itself weaved up in to the mountains to La Ceuva de Silence, along a mixture of brown dirt tracks and clay-red mud baths. There was absolutely no way we would have been able to hike the route ourselves without losing our shoes or our footing every two steps, but our trusty steeds managed to keep up a comfortable pace. Comfortable being the key word here. Occasionally, Pepito would give Perico, Ian’s horse, a mojo-esque tap on the rump and an “Ayoooo”. Next thing you know both horses would be off at a canter, with our backsides and cajones slamming against the saddle at slightly different frequencies. By the end, I had perfected the art of holding my balls and writhing in the saddle to minimise the damage. This was in complete contrast to the local gaujeros, who rode past us with ease. If you think about it though, that just means we’ve got bigger balls. Anyway, the views were pretty incredible so check out the photos.



Before dinner, we even had time to walk around the century-old Jardin de Caridad, a fairy-tale little garden full of rare orchids, lilies and chickens. It runs on donations and sales of its delicious fruits and, only a 2 minute walk east of the town centre, it is definitely worth a wander.



On the menu that night: langosta. Everyone who comes to Vinales, recommends eating at your casa paticulares. Technically, only large hotels can afford to buy in high quality, controlled food (like lobster), but black market produce is generally accepted in Cuba so what you actually find is that your casa will serve up the best food at very reasonable prices. We got a huge serving too, with more carbs than we could handle. So many carbs. And all for $10 CUCs each. Who said Cuba was expensive?

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Photos

Ow. Ouuwwww.
Fell over in the cave didn't I.