We had originally planned to walk down to the town of Viñales but yesterday we decided to book a tour locally so that we could see a bit more of the area. We were collected at 9am and told we had a ‘classic car’ to do our trip in, I am not quite sure what type of car it started off life being but it has definitely been modified over the years, all the same it was actually quite comfortable and there was air conditioning of sorts so it wasn’t too uncomfortable. We drove down the valley road to the town at which point we were glad we hadn’t gone with our original plan as the hill is quite steep and there isn’t actually a lot to look at in the town. The information we had looked at in the UK had suggested that it was a Colonial era town which it probably was but whereas I was expecting something similar to Havana it was more like a row of brightly painted houses which as Chris suggested looked more like pre-fabs than colonial! On the way to our first stop we saw a ‘compound’ which was created by Castro in the 1960s to encourage the socialist ethos, it is a dairy farm which operates as a collective or cooperative and as our guide stressed everyone is equal they all do the same work and have the same amount of land as well as the same housing. Our first stop was Cueva del Indio or cave of the Indians, the whole area around here are limestone so there are a number of cave systems. They were originally used by the original native Americans that found their way down to Cuba who were nomadic so this gave them a great place to shelter. The caves we visited have been ‘adapted’ for tourists and to be honest they are not that impressive, the main thing is that once you have walked through them there is a boat ride out. The reviews I had seen of this when we were researching this trip had suggested that the queue for the boat would take a long while which was the case, we walked through the cave, looking at the stalagmites and stalactites as we went, it was quite funny as one part was quite low and narrow and our guide said that the American’s can’t get through this bit as they are too fat! Not the most charitable of comments but if the people we had seen in the Deep South earlier in the year are anything to go by she is absolutely right! The wait for the boat seemed to take ages but that could be because there wasn’t really much to look at while we were waiting but we eventually got on the boat and headed off in one direction where the boat driver said that the cave system stretched for 1 km in total darkness, obviously as we couldn’t see anything we had to take his word for it so after looking at a very dark bit of the cave fora while we turned round and headed out. It was a nice little trip but I think if we had been on our own we probably wouldn’t have bothered. Next we headed back into town to visit a local tobacco farm, because of the UNESCO listing for the area they have to maintain the traditional methods of farming in this area which along with not using any pesticides means that everything is done manually which looks like back breaking work. We saw a couple of farmers ploughing their fields using oxen which is pretty tough in this heat and once we got to the farm we were shown how they grow the tobacco leaves. This farm was about 8 hectares and on that they grown tobacco as well as sugar, coffee, fruit and vegetables for their own consumption. We were met by a relatively young guy who was the son of the farmer and his English was fantastic, he showed us where the leaves were being dried, unfortunately this is the wrong season for tobacco so all they have is the seeds growing in the field next to the barn we were in, they plant these and let them grow to about 10cm then they take them from this field and plant them in their main location, they grow to about 2 meters in about 3 months when they are harvested. He talked about the different colour leaves and how the sun affects both the colour and the taste of the tobacco leaves. Cuba has three main regions and this one is best for growing tobacco, in the middle it is best for Sugar and towards the east it is best for coffee although you can grow all of them all over the island. After we had looked at the tobacco leaves we went and sat down and he showed us how to roll a cigar, basically it was the same process as in the factory, the farmer explained that being a socialist economy they have to give 90 percent of their crop to the government, the price for this is fixed across Cuba and it is sent to the main processing plants, they are allowed to keep 10 percent for their own consumption which seems to involve selling the cigars locally and to tourists. He asked if we wanted to try a cigar which we didn’t then brought out the honey and rum they make on the farm. We tried both of these the honey was actually very nice as was the rum which they make with fruit and the sugar they grow, it was 40 percent proof so thankfully he only gave us a small bit, we also looked at the coffee beans they have roasted, it is amazing that the beans have no taste or flavour until they are roasted but once that has happened it smelt lovely. He didn’t offer us any coffee to try but we had the option of buying honey, rum, cigars, coffee beans or coffee grounds, we didn’t buy any as we were not sure about transporting it all the way round Cuba! We drove back through town again and went to the ‘petrified art’ which both Chris and I thought were going to be prehistoric or at least Native American wall paintings but is actually a massive mural on the side of a mountain. Apparently it tells the story of the evolution of man but it just looked like some very big snails, a dinosaur and a couple of people but they are very proud of this. It used to be bright pink and purple but they have changed it to have a blue background over the years which is possibly a good thing. After looking at this for a while we then got back in our car and we were driven back to our hotel or rather a restaurant just down the road from our hotel where we had lunch prepared for us. The food was lovely we had shredded beef and the root vegetable thing that our guide in Havana had told us about, we also had banana, avocado and both brown and white rice, their brown rice is actually rice in a black bean sauce which is really nice. There was far too much food but we managed to eat quite a bit of it then all we had to do was walk up the road a bit to our hotel for a relax. I am glad that we had decided to do the tour as I think the walk to town would have been really hard and there didn’t look like there was much to see in town apart from the town square which sometimes has dancing in it but the guide suggested this would probably be later in the evening as it was empty when we drove past. Tomorrow we are moving on again and we have quite an early start to we will almost certainly be grateful for the last couple of days of relaxation.
