An evening in Vinales

We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging around Vinales - having a hasty mojito in the bar, sitting in the square and strolling up and down the main street.


Propoganda appeared even on lamp-posts

Vinales is in Pinar del Rio, a region based around farming. The best tobacco in Cuba comes from Pinar del Rio, but locals are the butt of lots of aren't-they-stupid jokes around Cuba.

The region of Vinales is stunning, with big hills called mogotes. They're made of limestone, with very steep sides, and are apparently similar to the hills of Quilin in southern China. Our casa has lovely rocking chairs on the front porch where we can sit and gaze at the hills, so that's precisely what we did.

For the first time, we found ourselves sharing our casa with other guests. We met our two Dutch companions over dinner and had a lengthy chat with them about everything: politics, hustlers, intellectual property law, phone notes.... it was nice to find other people who'd found the hustlers exhausting, and they really had been targetted. At one point they went for a guided walk and found themselves trapped on an island with their guide and three others demanding money and the guy's shoes and shirt before they'd call a boat to pick them up! Not so nice.

We ended the evening by upsetting our host by choosing an 8CUC walking tour run by and English-speaking guide over the 5CUC Spanish tour he was offering. When in Cuba, speak Spanish was his argument, but I'm not sure it was an entirely rational one. Funny man, really - he didn't seem to really take to us at all during our stay. Never mind, he struck me as a chauvinist anyway.