March already....

I’m very sorry about the long time since I’ve posted, there is a decent amount to tell here though now. Over the last few weeks I have had a really terrible cold, so for about a week I was pretty out of commission, so I hadn’t really done anything of interest during that time. Luckily Francisco, the owner of the house that I’m staying in was very helpful and gave me lots of advice for how to get better. One piece of advice that I followed and, actually I think it worked pretty well, was to drink a concoction made of oranges from his orange tree (these are sour cooking oranges, not oranges for eating), a splash of water, and a spoonful of sugar. It worked like magic on curing a pretty nasty sour throat. I still have a bit of a cough but I’m feeling much better now, I think the Havana air is not doing anything for my cough (the downside to being in a city that still runs cars from the `50s). Luckily I was able to get out of the city for the weekend. This last weekend we all took a bus down to a rural town called Viñales. It is a really beautiful area of Cuba with an indescribable landscape (although because I can’t post pictures, I will try). Mostly it is farmland, Tobacco mostly, although many of the other foods we eat here we were able to see growing there. There was also incredible mountains that looked like nothing I had ever seen, they are not very tall (for a mountain that is) and they are super steep, like almost vertical, and in places the top is actually farther out than the base. They would be a rock-climbers dream.  The tops of the mountains are rounded so they just appear to be hills raised on super steep walls…. I’m doing my best here to describe it but not that successfully…. I’d suggest just googleing Viñales, Cuba to see some pics of the landscape. Another really gorgeous part of the place was the color of the ground; some patches were bright earthy red, others almost orange, and some yellow. On the first day that I was there I went with a small group with a guide to a cave that was a good 3-hour hike out of town. On our hike the guide taught us a lot about the environment there and we made a few pit-stops at interesting places. The first was at a tobacco farm, where the farmer taught us how they grow tobacco, dry tobacco and finally how to roll the leaves into a cigar. After the farm and almost at the caves, we stopped at another guys farm for refreshments, he gave us fresh pineapple slices, a full coconut, and a glass of freshly squeezed sugar cane juice (which was incredible! And we got to help squeeze the sugar cane in the machine). Everything was super good, and in the end the guy only asked us to pay what we thought was fair, which I thought was very nice, although I imagine that a general tourist would give way more than necessary, especially with the different currencies. After this guys farm we went to the cave, it was super incredible, we had to pay a guy to show us into the cave, which was pitch black dark without his light. Once inside the cave we were able to swim in a large pool. The water was freaking freezing though. We explored a bit deeper into the caves and then turned around and went home for the evening. The night-life of Viñales was pretty interesting, it all revolves around a single plaza, but basically same as any small town. The next day I went horseback riding around the country side with another small group it was really amazing and I feel like I got to see a whole different side of Cuba. Anyways that is in a nutshell my trip to Viñales, it was really a great weekend, but it has made me very tired for this week. Well ‘til next post,