Vinales Cuba

Our casa was lovely, on the edge of town, nice to have the place to ourselves.
We had bought tea bags and coffee with us so that was sorted. We found a lovely little bakery that sold bread, ham and cheese rolls and water. It also sold cakes and on some days a homemade type chocolate. (ok but not what we are used to). There is hardly any junk food in Cuba, compared to the US where there are aisles upon aisles of pretty rubbish food.
In the supermarket we found pasta, bacon and evaporated milk, and from a vendor some very over priced bananas and an onion. Enough for dinner and bananas for dessert. Dinner was pretty basic, but not a single complaint from anyone in the family, makes me wonder how bad my usual cooking must be, but then every thing tastes better with bacon. The casa owner called in and saw I was cooking and gave us a couple more onions and some tomatoes, how lovely, so we were set for tomorrows dinner.

Most of the newer houses don’t have any glass or fly screen in their windows just aluminium louvers, which is fine except for the mozzies. We had bought mozzie spray, and coils with us which came in handy.Vinales main street is full of restaurants, and they are known for their whole pig BBQS. No need to eat en Casa these meals were cheap and delicious.

Vinales has guided walks around the countryside for 10CUC each, but I had a downloaded copy of ‘maps me’. It actually worked very well, with a little help from the locals. A really interesting walk in the country, ox pulled carts, tobacco fields and caves to explore.
We finished with lunch at Finca Agroecologica El Paraiso. Farm to table food, there was no menu, but for a set price dish after dish of delicious food. Great way to end the walk.

Our casa hosts son is a taxi driver so he took us on a tour of the areas around town too far to walk to.
First stop, the look out over Vinales Valley.
Second, the mural, El Mural de la Prehistoria. We didn’t pay to see it, just drove past
Third, a boat ride through the Indian Caves.
Fourth, A demo on making cigars and a guided walk in the tobacco field. The walk was 20 CUC/US$ each, never going to happen. Some tourist places will treat you like a walking ATM but we just called BS on their BS. There are plenty of other tobacco fields to walk in.

We really enjoyed Vinales, so decided to visit Veradero the most touristy beach place in Cuba. I had high expectations for this stop because of all the tourist dollars spent here.
On the way to Varadero we stopped for lunch, well the taxi driver stopped at a road side pork bun stand. It looked good, it smelt good, so we took the chance and hoped tomorrows sight seeing would not include the inside of a toilet bowl.