cubanicaragua: Chapter 26: Valley De Vinales

I made it to Vinales by about 6pm, and got off the bus to a swarm of about 20 casa particular owners trying to convince people to come to their houses. Vinales, I had read, had the most plentiful and the best selection of casa particulars in the country. For this reason I hadn’t made a reservation in advance but I did have an address of a recommended place – I made the mistake of telling someone the place I was planning on going and suddenly there were five people offering to take me there, or telling me they were full or claiming that it was their house – there was one women who tried all three consecutively so that by the time she got around to saying it was her house, it was 100% obvious that it wasn’t – but that didn’t stop her from trying to convince me it was her house- in a bid to escape this flurry I marched off in what I thought was the right direction, but then a helpful fireman steered me right.

I had to walk back past the bus station where a few straggling casa touters were still hanging around, including the “owner” of the casa I was looking for who once again offered to take me to her house – and when I refused one last time I she finally seemed to give up and said she’d be waiting there for me in case it was full. Just then the real owner of the casa (or at least the son of the real owner) drove by on his scooter and after some convincing, I agreed to let him take me there. It was the correct house and when we got there the very gracious host informed me she was full, so she took me next door to a little one room backyard bungalow, and with a quick look at the amazing view out the window, and a quick reassurance that the door (which had obviously been kicked in at some point in the past) was secure I accepted the room dumped my stuff and went for a walk around town.

When I got back, an amazing dinner of bean soup, salad and plantain chips awaited me. The moment I dug into the soup, a plate of rice appeared on the table – making it an amazingly large dinner. A moment later a potato omelet landed in front of me, followed by a plate of fruit and a jug of juice – making an absurdly large meal. I had told my hostess that I wasn’t very hungry and could just eat a small meal – like what they normally serve for breakfast, what I ended up with was breakfast plus lunch minus the meat entre. I decided to switch from beans to eggs thinking that the beans and rice would keep well for lunch the next day. I managed to eat the whole omelet, half of the plantain chips, and all the fruit. When I excused myself from the table my host declared with shock that I had hardly eaten anything. When I asked to save the beans and rice for the next day she was even more taken aback. So I took my leftover salad to store in the fridge in my bungalow and got ready to shower off the 12 hour bus ride.

It was pretty well dark now – so all the lights went on in my room and all the windows got closed. This is when I noticed some rat droppings around the bathroom window, and some other kind of dropping (later discovered to be from a lizard) all over the wall. Then I got in the shower and noticed it definitely hadn’t been cleaned in a while. Then I noticed that the hot water didn’t work. I was very used to taking cold showers in hot climates by now, and taking luke warm showers in cold climates but taking cold showers in cold climates I just cannot get used to so I had a very quick rinse and got ready for bed lamenting the fact that I had somehow managed to get a crappy casa in a town where I could have had the best in the country for the same price – then the pig next door started to have a very noisy snorting hissy fit about something, and I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning I very politely informed my hostess that I wouldn’t be staying a second night because there were droppings all around the room and the hot water didn’t work. I said I had another place in mind and she looked me squarely in the eye and said “you want to move because you are nervous about the door – I will find you another place with a secure room inside the house.” I thought for a moment about this response and then agreed that yes I wanted to move because I was nervous but that I could find another place on my own - in the end she insisted that she would find me a room in a nice house with neighbours and if I didn’t like it I could find my own place but that there were lots of bad people out there and that she would only place me with good people. The new room was nice and secure and free from mysterious animal droppings so I hastily agreed to take it and ran off to catch the bus for my day excursion to Cayo Levisa –

Cayo Levisa is a small beautiful tropical island just off the coast with a little bungalow type hotel and a few restaurants catering to the hotel visitors and day trippers. The road to the dock to get the ferry to the Cayo was amazingly scenic but also long – we finally reached the dock, got loaded into the boat and were on our way when a group of guests that arrived late and had the whole boat turned around to come back for them – taking up about 30 precious minutes of the five short hours the day trippers would have to spend on the island. The ferry landed and we took a five minute board -walk through the jungle before laying eyes on the pristine beach. I walked a little ways and picked out a nice spot for my sarong – parked my stuff and jumped in the water – it was COLD – but the day was hot so that was ok – then I got all suncreened up and spent the day catching a few last precious rays of Caribbean beach sun – conveniently interspersed with shady periods courtesy of the fluffy white clouds floating across the sky – it was the perfect day for beach bumming and I left perfectly content that it was four hours of well spent bus time.

The dock leaving the mainland for Cayo Levisa

Beautiful paradisaical beach

me on the beautiful paradisaical beach

Back in Vinales I had an amazing dinner in my new casa- composed of fish, plantain fries, beans, rice, fruit, veg and the most amazing pinacolada ever made – I went out late in the evening to meet up with some new friends from the Cayo Levisa trip at some kind of musical venue in town that was included with our day-trip. It was ten o’clock at night but I was assured that nothing bad ever happens in Vinales, so off I went with nothing to worry about except the rain and the stray dogs which, I was told can smell foreigners and love to bug them. The musical performances were very interesting and the most racy I had seen yet with female dancers decked out in sparkling thongs and male dancers wearing extremely tight spandex pants and apparently not much more. We were treated to some traditional cabaret type dancing and then to some kind of extremely cheesy emotional modern dance performance – by a guy in black spandex bellbottoms and ballet shoes. I drank my complementary martini, bid farewell my foreigner friends, and wandered home noticing that there was decidedly less harassment at night than in the day, I suppose because there were just less people around.

After a very good night’s sleep in my rat poo free room, I set off on my tour of the country side around Vinales. For ten bucks you get a tour guide almost all to yourself (plus 4 other people_ for four hours – which is a pretty great deal – especially for Cuba. We wandered through several farms, heard about how the hurricanes regularly tear through the homes and baseball stadiums in the area, heard about how tobacco is produced, heard about natural history, tasted some fresh local coffee, watched a cigar being rolled, tried a freshly rolled cigar – and that was it. I went home for a final delicious Vinales meal and then headed back to Havana to meet up with my parents.