Vinales!

Havana is a toilet. A dirty, smelly, barely-functioning toilet at that. So when Bill was finally feeling better we decided to get out of town for a couple of days and make that trip to Vinales that we’d been putting off. Vinales is a little two-horse town about 3 hours outside of Havana. Its claim to fame is the dramatic mountains that jut out towards the sky. And we didn’t have much planned except going hiking up in those peaks.

Our original plan was for Bill to take Junia and me to take Yanet and make a couple days out of it. Unfortunately the local communist party of Vinales decided a couple months back that it didn’t want the foreigners mixing with the good Cuban folk. No it was now illegal for a Cuban to stay with a foreigner in Vinales. And if any house was found violating this law they were closed down immediately and blacklisted, which basically meant their livelihood was gone. No there is no appeal process in Cuba, there is no jury of your peers, welcome to Cuba.

So we decided to leave the girls at home and just head out by ourselves. Traveling with Bill is like nothing else. We got of the bus and Vinales and were accosted by a sea of would-be capitalists offering rooms for rent. We avoided the hecklers when one of them stepped in front of Bill and said (in Spanish) “you don’t remember me?” Turns out this was Maria, half of Casa de Jesus and Maria where Bill had stayed last two times he was in Vinales. Bill had told me stories of how great there house was, I just didn’t expect to be recognized and offered room and board within seconds of stepping off the bus.

We struck a deal quickly and walked over to the house. Within a few minutes I knew I was going to like Vinales. The streets were clean, the air was fresh, the views spectacular. If this was what communism (drat I keep doing that, I mean socialism) had to offer I guess I could live with that. No we were not in Havana any longer.

After settling in for a bit we decided to go exploring. We rented some scooters and started venturing out. First we went and checked out the Cuban excuse for a National Park. The famous caves of Vinales which have a river running through them was our destination. Sure enough, look up and you see a stalactite. Look down and you see a stalagmite. Or is that the other way around? Whatever we got out of there fast and went on our own way.

As we rode towards the mountain range Bill spotted a small tobacco farm. Have I mentioned Bill is kind of a cigar nut? We stopped in their front yard and the locals looked at us like we were Martians. Two gringo’s pulling up on scooters and the most complicated machinery they owned was a bicycle. But we made friends fast. They offered us coffee (you can’t go anywhere in Cuba without being offered coffee) and rolled us a half-dozen cigars. Watching Cubans roll cigars is like watching Picasso paint, or so I would imagine if I’d ever seen Picasso paint. My mind immediately turned to more nefarious thoughts.

Michael one of the farm hands agreed to guide us through a hike early the next morning. We had been debating going up by ourselves, but after we heard about the Germans who were stranded for 3 days in those hills a month back, we decided a guide was in order. I mean, sure they were only Germans, but why chance it.