Two days in Viñales. 🇨🇺
Horseback riding through valleys ringed with limestone mountains, and spleunking the second-largest cave system on the American continent.

Roberto tells me he doesn’t know anyone headed all the way to Viñales from Cienfuegos. He’s booked me on a taxi colectivo to the Havana bus station, where I’ll be able to pick up another taxi to my destination. He gives me the address of my next casa particular and encourages me to take a photo in case I lose it, then bids me farewell.
I share the taxi with a Frenchwoman and her Dutch boyfriend. She tells me she grew up on the island of Réunion, off the coast of Madagascar. Her parents went on vacation and never left. She tells stories of sailing around the Seychelles and of swimming with whales and sea turtles. She never knew how good she had it until she visited some of the “top 10 diving” spots in the world and found they couldn’t compare to her childhood.
I ask her how she ended up back in Europe and she tells me it’s due to her brother. On a ski trip an instructor told her parents that he was a preternaturally gifted snowboarder and so they moved back to cultivate his talent. An injury kept him out of the last Olympics (representing Switzerland) but he’s working on qualifying for 2018. I told her I’d root for him.
We both realize we’re headed to Viñales and she asks the driver if he’d go all the way. Unfortunately, he already has a fare back to Cienfuegos, but he makes a call and tells us he’s secured us a ride.
In Havana, we look for his friend under a bridge crossing the highway. Police have kept him from parking and so he’s circling. We find him a few meters down the road and we make the switch, bidding our previous driver adieu.



Almost every house in Viñales appears to be a casa particular, and our driver circles the small town dropping each of us off at our respective casas. I’m the last to be dropped off and we make our way to the edge of town, down a small road that peters out by the fields.
The casa is full, but the owner tells me her mother has space. She leads me to a nearby house and shows me a room. She tells me her mother’s a great cook; she can’t vouch for the quality of the food in town (nor the safety) and asks me if I’d like full board. After having seen the town I agree (there aren’t many options, and I’m reminded of Leo’s comments back in Havana. Viñales is beautiful, but there’s not much to do at night). As we set a time for dinner, I accidentally bargain down the cost from 10cuc to 7cuc. I had asked to dine at 7:00 pm. I order fish.
In the afternoon it rains, and take a book and my journal to the porch. Juan, the husband, joins me and tells me about the fire in London, a shooting in Washington D.C., and Trump’s upcoming trip to Miami to announce his Cuba policy. Things get lost in translation, however, and it’s unclear to me the severity or cause of the first two events; his opinions on the latter come through loud and clear, however. Juan hasn’t a kind word for Trump, nor for Marco Rubio.

The next morning Domingo appears at my doorstep and leads me to his house in the fields. I’ve booked a horseback ride through the valley and he’s come to collect me. His spurs jingle jangle as he walks.
He introduces me to Mojito, my horse for the day. He watches as I climb into the saddle and nods his approval. Cigar smoke encircles his head. He hands me the reigns and mounts his horse and soon we are clip clopping into the fields, his dog Pierrolampo at our heels.
The morning is clear and bright and the greenness of the valley shimmers in the light. We intersect other groups of riders as we make our way on the dirt paths through the fields. At a tobacco farm, Domingo has me dismount and Leo shows me around. He tells me about their land and the farm, explaining that the government takes 90% of the crop, leaving them with 10% to do with as they please. I forget to ask him how much the government pays him for his tobacco.
He takes me into the drying house where leaves are stacked and waiting then brings me to another small building where he shows me how a cigar is rolled, using various parts of the plant. He offers me one, asking me if I’d like it the way Che liked his, with the tip dipped in honey. I nod and soon I am puffing along with Domingo as I walk outside to take photos of the valley. I ask Leo how long his family has been farming. “Hundreds of years,” says.




We ride through the valley and stop at a small cafe in the middle of the valley. A man takes me into a small clearing and explains how his family grows and roasts coffee. In the valley, they have a small operation; their main coffee plantation is further in the mountains.
He tells me that the fruit ripens at different rates and they must be careful about when they pick, after which they let the fruit dry for two months. A wooden mortar and pestle is used to separate the bean from the fruit, which is then roasted. Here, it takes an expert to know how to roast and for how long; in his family it’s his grandfather.
He shows me how to brew coffee the traditional way (boiling the beans with the water and filtering through a cloth cone) and then offers me a drop of a delicious local liquor made from little guavas: Guayabita del Pinar. I’m tempted to bring home a bottle.



Domingo leaves me at my casa just as the skies open. The weather has turned 180° in the span of 20 minutes, and I hide on the porch from the rain, catching up on my journal and reading.
In a break in the rain I walk into town to arrange a tour of the Cueva de Santo Tomas, Cuba’s largest cave system and the second-largest on the American continent. Unfortunately, due to the rain, no one seems interested. The tour office tells me to come back in an hour.
When I return, no one else has expressed interest, but they tell me their driver will take me. I bargain the fare and he tells me to wait on the curb. He’ll fetch the car.
He drives west out of the city through the rain. We can barely see the road through the downpour. He tells me he’s been married for 2 years and has an 8 month-old daughter. His wife works as a doctor and I ask if they have two cars. He laughs at this. Back in Havana, I’ll learn how expensive cars are; the fact they have one is luxury enough.
He studied engineering and hopes to work in the field later. For now, this job is more lucrative. I ask if anyone can operate a taxi. He tells me one must be licensed, and that 30% of his earnings as a driver goes to the government in the form of taxes.
American pop plays on his stereo and I ask if he prefers Cuban or American music. American, he tells me. He likes Rihanna, and especially U2, which surprises me a little. I hadn’t expected to be discussing the Irish rockers. I ask him what he likes most about Cuba, and he tells me it’s the free education. And the women. His father is a physics teacher and his sister teaches economics. I ask him wages and taxes work for his father; he tells me it’s complicated.


At the caves, I’m given a headlamp and a helmet. A group is about to head up into the caves as I arrive and I quickly join them for the ascent, which in the rain proves to be a bit of a scramble up to the cave mouth.
Inside, the guide tells us we’ll only be visiting two of the many levels of the cave. Some are too narrow or too dangerous to allow for group tours. A taxi driver from Havana whose come for the first time with a pair of tourists translates for us.
The guide takes us through the caverns, pointing out stalagmites and stalagtites in various formations, and explaining how they’ve formed. At one point, he shows us how some of the hollow columns can be played, tapping them to demonstrate their sonoroties. Near the end of the tour, he shows us where some small horizontal stalagmites have formed due to the constant wind blowing in from the mouth of the cave.
Back at the casa, I ask for lobster and push dinner back to 9pm. The rain has stopped and I want to take advantage of the late sunsets to walk around. I walk the length of the town and continue on the road towards the valley of silence.
At an intersection about a mile outside of town, I decide to turn back, hitching a ride with a passing truck. The driver is excited to have a passenger and offers me a drink from a bottle of rum he keeps tucked between the seats. He talks of being a mulatto, vigorously pantomiming the act by which different groups mix their genes.
I flash back to another, less vociferous, truck driver who once gave me a ride in Syria from the church of Saint Simeon Stylites back to Aleppo. The ice cold beer he offered me was the most refreshing thing I had ever tasted.

The driver leaves me in the middle of town and I walk up the road to the Hotel La Ermita for its views of the surrounding valleys. There, I offer to take the photo of a young family out with their young daughter.
I order a cerveza from the bar and settle into a chair overlooking Viñales. A man asks me if I can help him take a photo and I turn to see at least three generations of the same family behind me. I take a few photos and the man introduces himself and his family. His name is Angel and he’s making his annual visit from Chicago. He introduces the littlest one and his daughter-in-law lets me hold her for a moment before they leave to ready themselves for dinner.
Angel stays behind for a moment. We talk about Cuba and America, and while he sees the benefits of Cuba opening up slowly, he fears if it opens too quickly. As he sees it, the country is a great place to visit and for his family to raise their children, what with the low crime rate and the free public services. The travel bans don’t affect him as he has family in Cuba; the last thing he wants to see is it become another Puerto Rico.


The sun sets and I walk back down the hill to the casa particular. Juan is livid. He tells me that Trump has decided to undo all of Obama’s policies, effectively shuttering the country again to Americans. It’ll take some time for the Treasury Department to write new rules, but the die has been cast. He grumbles at the T.V. in the living room.
Dinner is delicious. I sit in the kitchen and devour the lobster, accompanied by beans and rice and fruit and dessert. There’s not much to do once I finish and so I retire to my room. I had awoken with mosquito bites all over the exposed half of my body and I make sure to close the metal shutters tightly.
In the morning I will return to Havana; New York in another two days. In my mind I had already planned a return trip, but the recent announcements make me wonder how easy it will be. The old Canadian or Mexican two-step will no doubt continue to be an option, but there’s nothing like a direct flight, and Jet Blue had made it so easy.
I fall asleep turning the question over in my mind, the buzz of the fans drowning out that of the mosquitoes outside. 🇨🇺


