After our breakfast (I wonder do Cubans ever get bored of cafe con leche, bread, fruit salad and omelette?) we wandered down to the travel agency we'd booked our hike with. Our guide was called Sandra (a name which could be from any country, as she repeatedly assured us), and there were 14 of us in the walking group, our numbers swelled by a tour group of English and Australians. They were all rather nice; it seemed to be a budget tour so there were lots of student types and back-packers.
We learnt so many interesting things on our walk. We started by visiting a farm which grows tobacco. Farms are given a tobacco quota which they must reach each year. At the farm we visited this meant growing and transplanting 100,000 plants by hand each year (tobacco seeds are impossibly tiny so you just scatter a load and when they grow a little you plant them out in straight lines).
Once the tobacco has grown, it must be harvested, also by hand. The leaves must be harvested layer by layer because they're used for different things, for example one is filler, another is the outer layer. And you can pick the leaves in two ways, either by slicing the stalk (quicker) or by plucking each leaf individually (worth more money). Then the leaves must be hung up to dry. If they've been harvested in pairs by slicing the stalk they hang nice and simply on the poles, but if they've been plucked individually they have to be threaded onto a long piece of string by the stalk. Mrs tourguide told us that from seed to cigar, tobacco undergoes 138 processes. So I kind of understand why they're so expensive.
Last season's tobacco drying
There were mangy dogs following us all the way, so we also discovered that once the local dog population gets out of control they round them up and either poison them or feed them to the crocodiles in the local crocodile farm. I normally love dogs, but in this case I pity the crocodiles.
We clambered part of the way up one of the mogotes and through a cave short enough not to need artificial light to get to the other side. At the bottom we rested and recuperated with a spot of fruit at a fruit farm where we bought some fresh coffee beans, beautifully packaged in a 500ml plastic water bottle. They smell delicious.
The other people in the group were interesting too. I got chatting to an Australian girl the same age as me who wants to be a TV or radio producer. She's just got a job with ABC so she's on her way. It was nice chatting to someone with similar interests to me. There was also an Australian who'd been to the recent International Rules match in Galway, so we talked about the violence there; and French and Canadian couples who were also lovely.
At the end of our hike the mangiest dog killed a chicken and left it on the roadside. We were rather disgusted to see a man deciding whether to eat it.
After our hike we headed back to our house for lunch (ham and cheese toasted sandwich with more freshly squeezed orange juice). We lazed in our rocking chairs a little while before finally motivating ourselves to get out of our seats and do something.
We hung around the village square for a while trying to motivate ourselves to do something touristy. We'd missed the green bus (5CUC for a day pass taking you to all the local attractions) by a few seconds and it would be about an hour before it appeared again, so we decided to take a taxi to the Cueva del India.
The Cueva del India is one of the main tour bus stops in the region, something clearly reflected in the 5CUC entry price. The cave was rediscovered in the 1920s and became known as the Cueva del India despite there being no evidence to suggest that it was ever more than a temporary resting place for Indians.
Entrance to the cave
The cave is impressively large, much taller and wider than the Ailwee Caves at home. Unfortunately as we entered the cave I suddenly thought of how frequently the power goes off in Cuba, and how terrifying it would be to be stuck in a pitch-black cave. I kindly shared this thought with Mum, so we both scurried through the cave rather quicker than we otherwise would have done.
About half way through the cave you come to a pool/river type thing and you complete the journey by boat. It's quite nice to get to do that really, but the whole trip only took about twenty minutes, which was a little disappointing.
I was very disorientated when we left the cave - the bus park was there but none of the other bits like the restaurant or entrance or anything. It took us a few minutes to realise that there were two bus parks and that the buses moved to this one from the one around the corner once they'd dropped off their passengers.
There were no taxis lurking around so we climbed aboard the green bus which arrived shortly. We'd half considered going to the Hotel La Ermita for a swim but we really were feeling lazy so instead we hung around the town a little more and checked our emails.
That evening we returned to the porch for more sitting. A German staying with our next-door neighbour called over for a chat. He had the most hilarious accent, right out of 'Allo 'Allo, so let's refer to him as Hans. He was trying to persuade us to do the six-hour hike on Tuesday, but since we were leaving at 2pm we didn't have time. So we chatted about Havana instead. He was very passionate about all sorts of things. He felt Paseo, in Centro Havana, was "ze prime example of how ze communism cannot exist".
Much entertained by our chat with Hans, we returned to our reading and writing. But lo! There was another power cut.
Our neighbour (who Hans had informed us was an active member of the whatever Cuba's political party is called) had two other guests who were also sitting on their porch in rocking chairs, and I felt they had the right approach to power cuts. They had lit a candle and were listening to jazz (possibly Stefan Grappelli) while smoking cigars. Lovely.
When the power returned (yes! In Vinales, city of wonders, power does return) we struck up a conversation with these guys and found they were American, no less. They'd entered Cuba through Mexico as proper outlaws should. It was fascinating talking to them, and realising that the American ban on travel to Cuba really is only America's, that Cuba is quite happy to allow Americans to enter. In fact, this is why your passport is not stamped to say you've been to Cuba. Instead, you must carry your stamped tourist visa with your passport while in Cuba. Clever, really: now we won't feel nervous about travelling to America with a Cuban stamp in our passports.
Obviously these guys, having decided to break the law (maximum fines: Helms-Burton Act $50,000, Trading with the Enemy Act $250,000), are quite pro-Cuba and not into the closed mindset of the Bush administration. But maybe the return of the Democrats and the impending death of Castro will change things.
Anyway, how very odd it must be travelling and not being able to bring back any evidence of your visit: no photos beside recognisable monuments, no souvenirs, no postcards, even having to leave your ticket stubs in Mexico. Fascinating to think people are prevented from going where they like in the "land of the free".
We had dinner with our new companions, the Dutch couple having left that morning. The new guys were Spanish so our host liked them and fed them lobster. We just had fish. But they were very nice: one spoke reasonable English and the other understood but didn't speak much. He had the greatest laugh, he laughed as if everything was the funniest thing in the world, a real belly laugh. You couldn't help but like him. Our host called him a girl for wanting milk with his coffee so he added some rum, which also entertained me.
Vinales not being known for its nightlife, we retired to bed early for a change.
No comments:
Post a Comment