Day Trip to Vinales

Vinales is a couple hours from Havana by bus through flat agricultural land with a backdrop of seemingly distant mountains. Our group stopped in the town of Vinales, a UNESCO site because of its 'colonial architecture' according to our guide. The low buildings with heavily columned porches are what makes this town distinctive. I don't know that for certain having only Havana to compare it to.

The best scenery was on the way to the tobacco farm: green, humpy mountains and red-orange fields. I have to confess I was a little disappointed that the tobacco had just been harvested. Inside the drying barn, a pole building sided with palm fronds, we are given a cigar-rolling demonstration. Here the ground is still plowed behind a team of cattle. It was interesting to learn that a good number of these farms are privately owned but committed to sell a a large percent of their crops to the state at a set price

Taking a turn, we headed a little deeper into the mountains, headed for lunch beneath a huge mural and a short boat ride in one of the many caves that once housed primitive tribes, even a few revolutionaries. Or so they say.