Cuba - Rural Valle de Vinales

We caught the mid-day bus to Vinales arriving in the evening to be met at the drop-off by the son of the casa owner. The trip was fine with one ten minute stop at a service parador with toilets. It was a short walk to the edge of the village and our accommodation for four days. The Vinales valley is edged by the unmistakable flat topped hills they call "Mogotes" which rise to around 400 m.

A view across the Valle de Vinales to the Mogotes where we walked to see sunrise. This photo was taken from Balcon del Valle near the Hotel los Jazmines which is south-west of Vinales along a steep and winding road.

Opposite our casa we watched the farmers busy working in the fields, mainly using manual methods with the help of oxen and horses. The rural scenes gave me the feeling of stepping back in time to the era of our great grandparents in rural England. They farmed in a more sustainable way compared with modern western agriculture with small mixed farms and without the use of artificial pesticides or fertilisers. The animals provided the labour for the heavy jobs and also the manure to feed the crops and fruit trees.

Typical scene near our casa with oxen ploughing the fields in the morning before the main heat of the day. We saw chickens and hens everywhere and were told they hear where they lay their eggs so hen houses aren't needed; I guess this is truly free range eggs, nice in the tortilla at breakfast.

We did a couple of interesting walks in the valley and hills to get views of the sunset and sunrise. This was entirely on farms tracks and paths through the homesteads and gave us a great impression of rural life and the vegetation in the valley.

This farmstead photo was taken on our sunset walk and is typical of the many buildings we passed on the path through the various fields. Some of these had solar power (110 V) to run refrigerators and lighting. We were told this was financed by the government.

The sunset walk ended at a farmstead for a "sundowner" and demonstration of cigar tobacco rolling.

The mist dispersing on our sunrise walk through the valley. Here, as in most places in Cuba we saw the "Turkey Vultures" (Cathartes aura) soaring overhead, the large numbers suggesting there is plenty of carrion around in the rural areas and probable road kill nearer the cities.

We also had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours walking around the casa owners farm, very much a mixed farm of crops including beans, tobacco, maize, pineapple, yucca, plantain, (the last two making nice chips that are popular in Cuba), sugar cane and lots of fruit trees, e.g. lime, orange, guava, mango and bananas and of course pigs, free range hens and goats used for milking. They had a new tobacco drying house that was made from locally sourced material and looked very impressive.

A new tobacco drying shed set against the background of the Mogote cliffs.

In Vinales we also visited the impressive botanical gardens, El Jardin de Caridad, dating back 100 years, the caves (Cueva del Indio), Mural de la Prehistoria (a cliff hand painted) and outdoor market selling a variety of local crafted wooden ornaments. We never did get the tour bus (Hop On/Off) although we caught glimpses of it from time to time and did try and wave it down. In the end, we got an old blue American "Chevy" taxi to take us around at about the same costs as the bus plus we had some entertainment from the elderly driver who explained the engine wasn't original but a Russian engine and it had great fuel economy (75 km per litre ! although free wheeling down hills helped). Also in Vinales, as in the rest of Cuba that we visited, we were quite taken by their wooden rocking chairs on the verandas of most house; may be a future woodworking project!. We can certainly recommend this area for a visit but we were told it gets very busy later in high season (officially starting about the 15 November) with the daily tour buses from Havana. We noticed that the other tourists seemed to be mainly German and French who had come from beach resorts for a day visit to Vinales and those we met in the casas where mainly younger Germans.