Vinales, Walk in the Fields

Walk in Viñales Valley
Sunday 8 January 2012

Is Ray smoking that big cigar?

We were glad we had made reservations for a Casa Particular in Viñales before we left Havana. We got off the bus after a 3 ½ hour ride from Havana on Saturday to a crowd of touts desperate for clients for their Casa Particulares. We were very pleased to see a young man with our names on a sign was waiting to lead us to our Casa Particular, Villa El Niño. We walked with him a few blocks to our street lined with pastel coloured small bungalows, ours is pink, opposite the Municipal ball field. Our hosts are a very pleasant couple who share the house with their daughter, Yanet, her husband, Alexander, and their five year old daughter. Ray and I have a double room with a bathroom and a second room was taken by Nina Leino, a Finish woman we travelled with from Hostal Peregrino. Next door is another Casa owned by Yanet’s Aunt. In fact, the small town of Viñales has more Casa Particulares per capita than any other place in Cuba. There are just a few streets in the town but each one has at least five Casas advertising rooms to rent. The burgeoning tourist industry has spawned a healthy restaurant industry and tour companies offering a variety of activities. You can hike, go for a horse ride, visit caves, take a day trip to the beach or just generally kick back and relax. We are doing most of the above.

We have both breakfast and dinner at our Villa. The food is quite good, fish the first night and chicken the second, and far more than we can eat. Breakfast is equally over sized. I have been trying, with little success, to have a tiny lunch to compensate for two large meals.

Sunday, Ray and I hired a guide, Ari, to lead us on a walk through the Viñales Valley. This is the favourite area for horseback rides as well as hikers. Several groups on horses passed us as we started off. We walked about 6 km in all, starting right from the house. Within minutes we were walking through the farmland where the soil is a rich red, perfect for fruits and vegetables, coffee and tobacco.

This is the season when the farmers start to pick the tobacco and hang it to dry. They hang the freshly picked leaves outside on wooden racks, and after 20 days the leaves are moved into a drying barn to cure for another three months. Several of the barns were covered with palm leaf thatching, both the walls and the steeply pitched roof. The tobacco leaves are ready for the next step when the rainy season starts in May. The dried leaves are sprinkled with a combination of cinnamon, anise, honey and water and left to marinate for a year or two. Only then are they ready to roll into cigars. We visited one farmer who explained the cigar making process and demonstrated how to roll a cigar. He also grows coffee beans so we bought a soft drink bottle full of beans to try out at home. We bought 12 organic, homemade cigars for Andrew to sample when we see him in April. We were assured the packaging of palm tree bark and a plastic bag would keep the cigars moist for 1-2 years provided they were kept away from the light. Someone else told us they keep best in the freezer. Time will tell.

The valley is ringed by dramatic mountains called Mogotes (haystacks), some up to 300 M high. The pinnacles are remnants of a limestone plateau that rose from the sea during the Jurassic period 160 million years ago. Wind and rain eroded the limestone and rounded the peaks. Now they are covered in forests, except for sheer cliffs where the sides of the hills have given way. This is the same Karst formations we have explored in other countries such as Vietnam and Thailand. Spelunkers love to explore the many underground rivers and caves in the Magotes and rock climbers come to test their skill on the bare cliffs.

Ari led us to Cueva de la Cava (Cow Cave), a short tunnel accessed by a 120 M scramble up the rocks to the entrance. One rock climber was part way up the rock face near the entrance and another was near the exit. We were not tempted to join the climbers. From the mouth of the cave we had a good view of the valley with Viñales a short distance away. Our descent was a set of concrete stairs, part of which had collapsed. We made it to the valley in short order.

On our way back to town we stopped at a small fruit and vegetable stand where the farmer owner displayed all the produce he grows. To quench our thirst we had a choice of hand pressed pineapple or guava juice. It was delicious.

We soon were back in town, just in time to watch a local baseball team practise for an upcoming game. Baseball is still king in Cuba, despite the growing popularity of soccer and basketball.