To Viñales

The day after Christmas, Brian and I headed to the bus terminal. We weren't going to catch a bus - we knew it was already full - but to take a taxi to Viñales. It still seems crazy to take a 100 mile taxi ride, but in Cuba it's easily done. It wasn't like a yellow cab with a ticking meter. Our taxi was a 10 year old Datsun with a cracked windshield, a wooden doorknob for a gear shift handle, and no seatbelts in the back. A pair of fuzzy dice would have made it just perfect.

The casa particular we had in Viñales was like the boutique hotel of casas. It was a new house with a big balcony, rooftop deck and gourmet meals.

Viñales is a little tourist town in a valley in the westernmost province of Cuba, Pinar del Rio. This area produces more tobacco than any other single region in the world, and the best of it, at least according to people who live there, is grown in Viñales. There are no big hotels here, but every other house rents out rooms to visitors who come to enjoy the outdoors. Tourists and locals don't really interact in Viñales, but seem to happily coexist. 

We thought we'd enjoy a quiet stop after Havana, but the street was full of horse carts, classic cars, farmers towing vegetables on their bikes, huge tour buses and women walking under umbrellas to stay out of the sun. And there were taxis, too, in various states of repair. Maybe some had fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror.