Cuba (3): Walking the Viñales Valley

Tobacco, Mogotes and a Jardin Botanico

Cuba

Breakfast with Basita

Basita apparently believed we needed feeding up. After yesterday's huge dinner, breakfast started with a small mountain of fruit - pineapple, banana, papaya and guava – then ham and cheese omelette, with more ham and cheese on the side and finally pancakes and honey.

Ham and cheese, often in sandwiches, are a Cuban staple. We encountered them frequently and both always came ready sliced from a plastic packet. Whether it is possible to find good ham and real cheese I do not know, but everything else Basita produced was fresh and top quality, so perhaps not.

Viñales is 20Km north of Pinar del Rio in the far West of the island

Julio arrived at 9 o’clock for our walk round the valley – and we had plenty of breakfast to walk off. We stood outside the house as he showed us the intended route on his map.

Lynne on Basita's veranda in the early evening. In the morning we stood there with Julio

Covid Related Alarms and Excursions

We were about to set off when Basita came bustling out and called us back for a phone call from Latin America Travel, the Cuban associates of our British travels agents confusingly called Journey Latin America (JLA). The gist of the call was that we had an email from JLA equiring an urgent response.

That alarm was followed by an excursion into town to the nearest bar with wifi; Julio said he would wait in the bookshop opposite the square. The bar was just opening and they switched on the wifi at our request so we ordered a couple of espressos in return. The email informed us that the earliest they could get us home was Saturday, requiring a return to Havana on Friday. Unaware that the British Government had warned against all but essential overseas travel and advised citizens already abroad to return home, my reply was perhaps a little gung-ho: we were booked to travel home on Tuesday, and that was when we would like to go, or at least as close as possible.

The bookshop opposite the square was closed and Julio was nowhere to be seen. We were beginning to wonder how to fill our day when he appeared carrying a heavy package which he deposited at the local travel company’s office. ‘Are we still walking?’ he asked when we joined him.

Tobacco and Cuban Cigars

We walked back past Basita's and further down the rough road…

Past Basita's and further out of Viñales

….eventually turning left into the countryside. A dusty track of red earth took us between fields, some fenced, some with hedges of cactus and other wild plants.

Tobacco was the main crop and we soon arrived at a tobacco farm. Julio went to find the boss while we waited in the shade of an avocado tree…

Lynne not quite in the shade of an avocado tree, Viñales Valley

…with a view over the tobacco fields to the mogotes (a less extreme version of the karst geology we have encountered elsewhere, particularly around Guilin in China and in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam).

Mogotes beyond a harvested tobacco field, Viñales Valley.

Our host took us to the drying shed where the first part of this year’scrop was busy giving up its moisture.

Tobacco drying shed, Viñales Valley

When the plants flower, he told us, the flowers are removed and the seeds become next year’s crop. Their removal encourages the leaves to grow bigger and they are harvested in three parts; the top, middle and bottom, are each used for different styles of cigars, the strongest from the top and most delicately flavoured from the bottom.

In another shed he showed how, with only a flat surface and a sharp blade, it appears really easy to turn an unpromising bunch of leaves into a cigar – though it is undoubtedly harder than it looks.

He started by stripping out the stalks ‘as that’s the most harmful part’ (and the rest is completely benign?)…

Stripping the stalks from the tobacco leaves, Viñales Valley

…before selecting an outer leaf, cutting all but the eventual ‘wrapper’ into strips, laying them on the outer leaf and giving it a good roll. I had always believed that Cuban cigars were rolled on a maiden’s inner thigh - the truth was a tad disappointing.

Rolling the strips into a rough cigar

He then carefully rolled the rough looking cigar into the wrapper leaf which was stuck into place. The result looked just like a cigar – until he held it up by the end.

Make your own joke

After drying and packing it is ready for sale. Under the Cuban system the government takes a quota from the crop and the surplus can be sold at market prices. Unfortunately for our host, we do not smoke and declined to purchase any. He accepted this philosophically – he must hear it often – and tentatively suggested we might take some home as presents. Again we declined, we know very few smokers and none who smoke cigars.

Cigars for sale, Viñales Valley

We took our leave and continued our walk through the fields.

Continuing through between the fields, Viñales Valley

Passing a stand of bamboo, Julio made a comment about it being used for building in the far east, but it would never do in Cuba because of the high winds. I could have mentioned typhoons, or the many, many other uses of bamboo we have encountered, from guttering to gramophone needles, but if the Cubans have not worked it out for themselves….

Bamboo, Viñales Valley

Since we left the road, we had been continually passed from behind by riders in cowboy hats, some with a string of horses, all with a cheerful ‘Hola. ‘They have to go for a veterinary inspection today,’ Julio explained. Eventually we reached the farm where the inspections were taking place. After that the horses were coming towards us.

Horses on the way to vetinary inspection, Viñales Valley

We followed Julio as the land gently rose…

Following Julio as the land rose

…until we had a view over Viñales town…

Viñales

…. and to the nearest mogote, small and detached from the main group, it is known as Coco Solo.

Coco Solo, Viñales Valley

Common Cuban Birds

Cuban Grassquit

Cuban Tody

Julio heard and then pointed out two birds. The Cuban tody is found in Cuba and its offshore islands, while the Cuban grassquit is slightly more widespread as it is also inhabits the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Both are locally common – and also pretty. I took many photographs, but only of leaves - the birds evaded me entirely. I have borrowed these pictures from Wikipedia.

(Tody by Charles J Sharp, reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International, Grassquit by Richard Taylor, reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

Cuban Fruit

We reached a café across the dam of a partly empty reservoir…

A dam and a partially empty reservoir, Viñales Valley

…with a view good of the larger slightly more distant mogotes.

Mogotes, Viñales Valley

After a short wait we were introduced to Reuben from the nearby farm who gave us a tour of his fruit trees, including cocoa which may not be a fruit…

Cocoa, Viñales Valley

…and pineapple which is not a tree.

Pineapple, Viñales Valley

We had never heard of mamey, but Reuben assured us it is the best fruit in Cuba, ‘even better than mango’. There are (I have learned) two unrelated fruit called mamey, the yellow mamey or South American apricot (mammea americana) and the red mamey (pouteria sapota) which is common in Cuba and southern Florida. I presume, therefore, that this is red mamey, though the colour only becomes evident when they are cut open.

Mamey, Viñales Valley

We have heard of maracas, but not heard of them growing on a tree. The fruits below are one of four closely related Crescentia fruits. The pulp is not good to eat, but rural Cubans traditionally used the hard shells as bowls or coffee cups, or just dry them with the seeds inside as maracas.

Maracas Tree, Viñales Valley

Coffee is Reuben’s main crop and he introduced us to the surplus they are allowed to sell after the government has taken its quota. Cuban coffee is good and strong, so we bought a bottle of beans. We also tasted Guayabita de Pinar, rum flavoured with small (blueberry sized) guavas, a speciality of Pinar del Rio Province. It was very pleasant, but our 2 litre duty-free allowance was already earmarked for Havana Club 3 year-old, the perfect rum for cocktails, and Havana Club 7-year-old, the most sumptuous of rums, so he made no sale.

Coffee and Guayabita del Pinar, Viñales Valley

Past Coco Solo and Back to Basita’s

Leaving Reuben we walked past a market garden.

Market Garden, Viñales Valley

Somewhere after the tobacco farm we had found our way round the back of Coco Solo (insofar as a mogote has a ‘front’ and ‘back’) and now approached it from the ‘far’ side.

Coco Solo, Viñales Valley

Tracking round the end of the mogote …

Coco Solo, Viñales Valley

…we reached what appeared to be a remote hamlet. Aerial photos suggest it is more the last gasp of Viñales’ straggle into its rural hinterland, but it felt like a different, remoter world.

Rural hamlet by Coco Colo, Viñales Valley

From here we followed the track back to the road past Basita’s. It was well past midday, we had set out in the morning warmth, but the day had become far hotter than is ideal for walking. Julio complained of the heat and asked how we were coping. We may not be so used to it – though we are hardly inexperienced – but I felt comfortable in Viñales, my shoes and socks stained red with the dust that formed a light coating on all exposed skin, and a temperature nudging 30°. It felt a better option than 10° and drizzle in north Staffordshire.

Lunch in Viñales and the Jardin Botánico

We said ‘farewell’ to Julio, washed off as much of the dust as was willing to go quickly and walked into town to find some lunch.

Picking a restaurant with free wifi, but otherwise rather at random we found the beer was a little more expensive but came with a ‘free’ tapa (not a word often used in the singular in this context). We ordered cheese and ham toasties, too, to be on the safe side. The tapa was patatas bravas, and small enough to be just right with the toastie. Many years ago, when I was nowt but a puppy, a wise older man whose name I have long forgotten told me there was no such thing as bad beer, there is just beer and good beer. Cuban beer, whether Bucanero or Cristal is beer, but it was cold and wet and did its job.

Lunch over; we walked down to the Botanical Gardens.

Botanical Gardens, Viñales

As botanical gardens go, Viñales’ garden is small but perfectly formed. Created by sisters Caridad and Carmen Miranda whose family still live on site, it is free (donations are requested) and volunteer guides greet visitors at the gate.

Perhaps the best description of the garden is ‘controlled jungle’ with quirky humour; the odd rag doll appears in the foliage, the ‘beer tree’ is bowed down with cans and bottles, and another tree fruits hard hats.

Hard hat tree, Viñales botanical gardens

My botanical knowledge is weak and we were shown many more plants than I can remember, but here are a few that stuck in my mind.

Plants we normally see growing in pots indoors, like the spider plant…

Spider palnt, Viñales botanical garden

…or the Swiss cheese plant are happy outdoors here.

Swiss cheese palnt, Viñales botanical gardens

There is even a parasitic Swiss cheese plant.

Parasitic Swiss cheese plant

The Ceiba (Kapok) tree was spiritually important to the now wiped out indigenous Cubans, and still is to the Mayans. The founding of Havana was completed under the shade of a Ceiba beside where the Templete now stands.

Ceiba tree, Viñales botanical gardens

The Cuban national tree, the Royal Palm (Roystonea Regia), is a particularly tall ornamental palm….

Royal palm, Viñales botanical garden

…and the path beneath the palm was strewn with the flowers of the shaving brush tree (Pseudobombax ellipticum).

The flower of the shaving brush tree, Viñales botanical gardens

At the end another guide gave a brief talk about their fruit trees and pressed slices of pineapple and starfruit on us. I am not a big fan of starfruit but the pineapple was ripe and sweet.

Fruit at the Viñales Botanical Garden

We then repaired to the little café among the trees to check Reuben’s claim this morning that mamey juice was better than mango. It was reddish, sharpish and thin – mango has nothing to fear.

Back to Basita's

The road to Basita’s is always of interest. We saw no horse-drawn vehicles in Havana, but they abound here, and the old American cars are not for show.

Driving in Viñales - believe it or not, Cubans drive on the right! (in theory)

We thought we might spend an hour sitting on the veranda with a book, but as soon as we arrived Basita plied us with coffee and biscuits and a huge pile of fruit. We could not resist.

Whenwe did reach the veranda we had another visit from the little lad next door with his large knife and even lager scabbard. He ran through his ninja moves and showed how sharp the knife was by slashing at the long grass. Do his parents know he is playing with that knife?

Diner in Viñales

Later we walked into town and ordered daiquiris at the garden restaurant where we drank mojitos yesterday. Their wifi told us there was no news on the flight front, and their menu suggested we might like ropa vieja, literally ‘old clothes’. Ropa vieja, generally popular around the Spanish speaking Caribbean, is one of Cuba’s national dishes. We had to give it a go.

Usually it involves beef being stewed to extreme tenderness and then pulled apart. The sauce is tomato based with onions, peppers, garlic and vinegar and the accompaniment is rice, beans and fried plantains. This was pork rather beef and the beans were missing but otherwise it was fairly typical, I think. We liked it, though it was more comfort food than ground-breaking - but that is the way with Cuban cuisine.

Ropa Vieja, Viñales. Normally I would not recommend drinking beer and cocktails at the same time, but this is Cuba

We had finished eating when four German couples arrived requiring tables to be pulled together. We generously donated ours and had a final cocktail in the more informal seating area.

Sometimes the stress of it all starts to grind me down

Then we ambled slowly ‘home’ in the balmy warmth of the tropical evening.

Cuba

Part 1: Havana
Part 2: Havana to Viñales
Part 3: Walking the Viñales Valley
Part 4: Viñales to Trinidad de Cuba
Part 5: Trinidad (1) The Town
Part 6: Trinidad (2) Valle de Los Ingenios
Part 7: Santa Clara and Che Guevara
Part 8: Jibacoa and a Strange Trip Home

Cuba (2): Havana to Viñales

A Bus to Vinales and an Introduction to Basita

Leaving Havana

Cuba

We could have profitably spent another day in Havana, but that was not the itinerary we had agreed, so we rose early and by 8 o’clock had trundled our cases down the street to the large hotel by the ferry port. This was the pick-up point for the ‘tourist bus', one of several shuttling around Cuba’s more attractive locations.

The bus arrived on time, but the same could not said for all of the passengers. Half an hour passed before they decided to write off the last as a no-show and get on the road.

Viñales is 30km north of Pinar del Río, the eponymous capital of Cuba's westernmost province

But we had boarded an empty bus and before we could start the 180km journey to Viñales we had to tour the hotels of Havana picking up the rest of the passengers. That took an hour, and our drive along the main thoroughfares gave plenty of opportunity to peer into side-streets as we passed.

Havana side-street

Cuba is not wealthy, but as it ranked 78th out of 190 (World Bank, 2018) there are many far poorer countries. Some side-streets made that hard to believe.

One of Havana's more grim looking side-streets

Autopista Este-Ouste

We hit the A4, the Autopista Este-Ouste running from Havana to Pinar del Río around 9.30. The tree lined road ran through endless flat farmland – with occasionally a few hills in the hazy distance – and we passed through no towns or villages.

Not much to see on the A4 west of Havana

With little to see a service station break was welcome but we were disappointed with the overpriced lukewarm coffee. The well maintained, though not exactly youthful Chevrolet hire car in the car park was worth a second glance…

Aged Chevrolet hire car in a service station car park, west of Havana

…as were the unusually shaped palms nearby. They are, I think, Cuban Belly Palms (Acrocomia crispa) which are endemic to Cuba.

Cuban Belly Palms by the A4 service station west of Havana

The next half hour was much the same.

Cuban-American Relations (1)

One of the joys of a command economy is that roadsides are not disfigured with billboards exhorting you to visit attractions that do not attract you or to buy goods you neither need nor want.

The downside is that occasionally the fields grow a crop of political slogans. They flourished in North Korea, though nobody would translate them for us. They sprout in Cuban soil too, though Cuba is no North Korea, and here they are easier to understand. The target of the posters along the A4 was the Helms-Burton Act, which became US law in 1996.

'There is no fear here, not of Burton, nor of Bolton' (John Bolton, Trumps' National Security Advisor in 2019)
I was on the wrong side of the bus to photograph any posters, and there seem to be no Helms-Burton billboards on the internet
This is borrowed from Bohemia, a Havana based news magazine

Officially called the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, it sets out to tell Cubans how to run their country and enforce sanctions on any company trading with Cuba – effectively forcing non-US companies to choose between operating in the little Cuban or vast American market

The Helms–Burton Act was condemned in 1996 by the European Union, Canada, Mexico and other U.S. allies. The British reaction included criminal sanctions in the UK for complying with the act's extraterritorial provisions. All subsequent US presidents have signed waivers to the extra-territorial sections of the law, though in 2019 Donald Trump allowed Title III* to come into operation prompting the new wave of posters.

Cuban -American Relations Part 2 appears in Viñales to Trinidad de Cuba, Part 3 in Trinidad (1) The Town, Part 4 in Jibacoa

Pinar del Rio to Viñales

I prefer positive messages, and arriving in Pinar del Río we were greeted with the sign below. Presumably it is a farewell to the former president who died in 2016, but whether official or spontaneous, I have no idea.

Street corner, Pinar del Río

The provincial capital of Pinar del Río marks the end of the Autopista Este-Ouste. We did not see much of the city as our driver cut round to the north and onto Highway 241 which would take us the remaining 30km to Viñales.

Looking out of the bus window became more interesting, the land was immediately less flat…

North of Pinar del Río. I think these are Royal Palms, Cuba's national tree, but please do not confuse me with a palm expert

…and eventually the first mogotes came into view. Mogotes, a less dramatic version of Karst topography, are a feature of the Viñales valley, though they also occur elsewhere in Cuba.

Nearing Viñales

Arriving in Viñales

Viñales is a small town and we quickly reached the drop off point at the square half way along the main street. It is a pleasant little square with the road on one side, a cultural central opposite ….

Cultural centre, Viñales town square

….and a church on the north side.

The church getting a new coat of paint, town square, Viñales

These pictures were taken later, it was not so calm when we arrived. Small as it might be Viñales is a major tourist centre with many home stays - B&Bs really – and more than several had sent representatives to lure the new arrivals. Out home stay was already booked, as was a taxi to take us there – the driver locating us among the throng with practised ease.

Casa Basita

At the end of the main street the highway swung left, but we carried straight on, down a barely surfaced road lined with mainly single storey dwellings…

Going straight on at the end of the main street, Viñales

…among them Casa Basita.

Casa Basita, Viñales

It may have been the shortest taxi ride we have ever taken, but it would have been a long trundle with our cases.

We were welcomed by Basita herself. Inside there was a formal front room with two guest rooms off it. Our room was a good size and comfortable, the bathroom functional and soap was provided - and only in Cuba is that small fact worthy of a mention.

Lynne and Basita, Casa Basita

As soon as we had settled in, Basita offered us coffee in the room at the back of the house, a dining room with a partial ceiling - an atrium of sorts. From the large adjacent kitchen, she produced coffee, ham and cheese sandwiches and fruit, in other words lunch, which was not part of our deal but for which she never asked payment.

Lunch at Basita's, Viñales

Back into Town

After lunch we walked back into town. We checked out the bars and cafés, of which there were an abundance, inspected the tourist market and made a purchase or two to take home.

Tourist Market, Viñales

We continued to the square, the scrum had gone so we had a look round that and then we found a bar/restaurant with comfortable seating in a small garden with free wifi. What could be better?

Cocktails in General, Mojitos in Particular

We are not of the cocktail generation.

The first recorded use of ‘cocktail’ to mean mixed alcoholic drink was in New York in 1806 and the first bartender’s guide with specific recipes was published there in 1862. Cocktails became fashionable well before prohibition (1920-33) when the poor quality of illegal spirits further encouraged mixing.

In the UK cocktails were briefly fashionable, but I am unsure when. By the time my drinking career began in the late sixties they were long gone – provided you do not consider G&T a cocktail, and no-one on our side of the Atlantic would.

Cocktails re-emerged in the final years of the century among the young, designed, I suspect, to make alcohol palatable to inexperienced drinkers with immature palates. My generation eschewed them.

We have drunk the very occasional cocktail on our travels and they have usually been expensive, but the first page of every Cuban menu is dedicated to them and they are cheaper than beer, so resistance is futile. We had our first ever daiquiris in Havana yesterday; now seemed the moment to try mojitos.

Mojitos in Viñales

Cuba is awash with rum and Florida is not very far away, so during prohibition Cuba became a refuge for the sort of people who now call themselves mixologists - and those seeking a relaxed and legal drink. Most rum-based cocktails are Cuban in origin, though many have had American input. By and large Cuba has not benefitted from its proximity to America, but on this occasion….

That said, I found my mojito too wet, too thin and too sweet. The daiquiri I had enjoyed; mojitos seemed a drink for somebody else.

Warnings of a Distant Covid-19

Using the bar's wifi we learned about supermarkets at home being cleaned out by panic buying and talk of an imminent lockdown. An email from our daughter wondering how we would get home as flights were being cancelled, sounded a little panicky.

Lynne’s phone lacked our travel agent’s address, so we returned to Basita’s for my tablet, then back into town to the nearest bar with wifi – they were easier to find than in Havana – where we dispatched a message to our agents. We knew that ultimately we would go home when we had to, and there might be little choice, but we had hardly arrived in Cuba and felt no urge to leave yet.

Dinner at Basita’s

Returning to Basita’s we spent a little down time sitting on the roof reading.

Reading on Basita's roof, Viñales

The roof also gave us a vantage point for looking out over the street.

Looking up the street from Basita's roof, Viñales

Dinner on our first night in Viñales was to be provided by Basita, and she did us proud. The spread she laid on was the very best of home cooking; skilful in execution, varied in content and lavish in quantity. In Cuban style, rice and beans were the centrepiece, but there were roast chicken drumsticks with a tomato-based sauce, boiled potatoes, roast sweet potatoes, sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumber, shredded cabbage and fried plantain all served with the little touches that said she cared. And she gave us a beer each, too (and I mean ‘gave’, in the same circumstances others charged).

Dinner at Basita's, Viñales

Her dessert was an excellent home-produced crème caramel (pudim flan, as they say in Portugal) but not solely a crème caramel, with it came halves of soft orange peel in an orange flavoured syrup that magically turned the humble and oft discarded peel onto the best bit of an orange!

After dinner we strolled back into town, taking pleasure in the warm evening and walking off at least part of our sizeable meal.

On our return the boy from next door emerged, a huge scabbard dangling from his belt. He withdrew a much smaller, though still substantial knife and tried to look as fierce as a seven-year-old can. Lynne feigned horror and he put it straight back in its scabbard, looking guilty and a little frightened by what he had done. He was a nice little lad (we met him again later) his look made us laugh and he certainly meant no harm, but I am not sure a boy that age should be playing with knives - of any size.

*Title III of Helms-Burton authorizes U.S. nationals with claims to confiscated property in Cuba to file suit in U.S. courts against persons that may be "trafficking" in that property.

Carnival Cruise was promptly sued by the dispossessed leaseholders of the dock in Havana used by their cruise ships. The case was thrown out when it was shown that, under any circumstances, the lease would have expired in 2004.

Cuba

Part 1: Havana
Part 2: Havana to Viñales
Part 3: Walking the Viñales Valley
Part 4: Viñales to Trinidad de Cuba
Part 5: Trinidad (1) The Town
Part 6: Trinidad (2) Valle de Los Ingenios
Part 7: Santa Clara and Che Guevara
Part 8: Jibacoa and a Strange Trip Home