Our Cuba visit so far focused only on cities and we haven’t really seen much of its countryside. Judging from the bus travels Cuba seems extremely green, with lush forests and hilly sceneries, however there are only few official nature parks and you would need to be pretty adventurous (and rent a car) to go hiking on your own.
One great place to get your share of nature is Vinales, a very laid-back small town, famous for its karst-mountain scenery, fertile lands with fruit, coffee and tobacco plantations and its cowboys looking after the land old-fashioned way.
The town basically consists of a small square, from where individual, one-story houses spread out, merging with the surrounding fields. The design of the houses is very consistent, which would make for quite a boring view if it weren’t for the bright and varied coloring.
All houses seem in perfect maintenance with spotless front porches and the compulsory two rocking chairs, putting up their best faces for the few arriving tourists. Nearly every house has the blue anchor in front, renting out one or two rooms.
For once we had a quick look on tripadvisor before departing from our last place and called ahead to reserve a room at “sunny balcony”. And it really lived up to its name! One of the very few two story buildings, we had its second story totally to ourselves, with a nice room and huge balcony! Where we loved to spend long breakfasts, admiring the beautiful view and indulging in the gorgeous breakfast with pancakes, home-made coconut paste and savory tomato-chili bread spread.
The beautiful landscape can be explored on foot, by mountain bike or by horse. We opted for the lazy option, which turned out to be a wise choice as it has been raining regularly for the past few week and several paths have turned to ankle-high mud.
We got one of the grumpy cowboys as guide and spent a very interesting half day exploring the countryside and visiting a tobacco farmer and a fruit plantation.
The majority of the tobacco harvest is handed over to the famous (government run) Cuban cigar companies, but every farmer is allowed to keep a small share for their own consumption and for selling to tourists. But instead of a big sales pitch, the relaxed farmer took all his time explaining us the whole process of making tobacco and how to roll a proper cigar and only casually mentioned the possibility to buy a bundle. It was really cheap, but we decided to remain non-smokers 😉
Also the visit to a fruit farm was pretty impressive as to the huge range of different fruits being grown – even though the organic production techniques result only in baby versions of the fruits we are used to. Or are our fruits just abnormal inflated versions of how fruits are supposed to be? hmmm…
Vinales is a great place to relax and enjoy its peace and nature. Even for Cuban standards, clocks are ticking slow and you have to search hard to find the compulsory government propaganda, which usually fills large billboards
