Santander Hotel for bus to Viñales @ 7:30
This was a bus tour. Not sure if I expected this – a bit over tours, and the tour leader only spoke in Spanish, of course. But we did get to see a lot. Cigar making, Cave tour, the beautiful hills, a few shopping stop-offs etc.
A two hour drive southwest of the city of Havana stands the stunning limestone landscape of the Valle de Viñales or Viñales Valley. It is located in the province of Pinar del Rio about 200 km from Havana and on the most westerly point of Cuba. A beautifully lush and contrasting land compared to Havana is famously known as producers of Cuban tobacco use in those globally iconic Cuban cigars.
“an outstanding karst landscape in which traditional methods of agriculture (notably tobacco growing) have survived unchanged for several centuries.
The Valle de Viñales is located in the Sierra de los Organos and has an idyllic and unique landscape, which is dotted with ‘mogotes’ (The mogotes stand pretty tall at 300m) also known as Karst formations surrounding the valley with rich red soil and abundant palm trees is one of the reasons why the Valle de Viñales is home to Cuba’s most fertile soil allowing the best tobacco to be grown, dried and harvested.
PRE-HISTORIC MOGOTE PAINTINGS
One of the most interesting but slightly maybe even strange things we saw was The Vinales Mural de la Pre-historia, which is the handy work of the former director of mapping at the Cuban Academy of Sciences, Leovigildo Gonzalez Morillo. He has portrayed world history up until the age of humans on mogote or limestone rock wall.
THE INDIA CAVES
There are many caves in the Valle de Vinales that can be visited and are open to the public, however we chose The Cueva del Indio or India Caves. There is a short walk or hike into the cave and you then board a small boat, which takes you into the nooks and crannies of the cave on the underground river. It comes equipped with a guide who points out the rock formations of interest and explains all those interesting little facts that wow you at the time but honesty, I’m a little embarrassed to say, I can’t remember them now!