Viñales

Time is running out to share all of the info I was hoping to share…only four sleeps as I tell my grandkids! Just a few more blog entries before we depart….

Viñales is a beautiful and lush valley in Pinar del Río province of Cuba, with a population of around 10,000. It’s about 26 kilometers north of the city of Pinar del Río, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This article also covers the town by the same name.

Viñales is said to be Fidel Castro’s favorite place in Cuba. The mountains are beautiful, the farmers grow the best tobacco in the world, and tourists—who come every day by the busload—are allowed to mingle with the Cubans and spread money in a nice even sugar-coating.

The main street, Calle Salvador Cisneros, was named after Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, who was a leader in the war of independence (1868-1878) and later was President of Cuba from 1895 to 1897.

In the central plaza, the Casa de la Cultura puts on events every day (or night), including music, fashion shows, and children’s events.

Also on the central plaza is an art gallery and the church. On Saturday mornings there’s a farmer’s market at the plaza.

Mural de la Prehistoria

Perhaps the worst tourist attraction in Cuba is the Mural de la Prehistoria. In 1961 Fidel Castro visited a beautiful valley a few kilometers west of Viñales. He commissioned that the cliff should be painted with snails, dinosaurs, and a family of cave persons, in garish colors! If time is short, I think we can skip this attraction…LOL

There’s a restaurant, bar, and gift shop. To be fair, the guidebook says that the food in the restaurant is excellent and the live music is good. Also there’s horseback riding. So consider visiting the mural and doing something other than looking at the mural.

Pinar del Rio

Out and about in Cuba we will be visiting Pinar del Rio, Vinales, Cienfuegos and Trinidad . Today’s installment deals with Pinar del Rio, which you can see is to the southwest of Havana on the map below –

Pinar del Río is a Cuban city, capital of Pinar del Río Province. With a city population of 139,336 (2004), in a municipality of 190,332, it is the 10th Cuban city. Inhabitants of the area are called Pinareños.

Pinar del Río was one of the last major cities in Cuba founded by the Spanish. The city and province was originally founded as Nueva Filipinas (New Philippines) due to the large influx of Filipinos who had arrived by traveling on the Manila Galleons. They brought with them tamarind (also known as sampaloc), camisa de chinos, and arroz caldo (also known as arroz caldoso)

Known as Chinos Manila among the local population, the Filipinos worked the huge tobacco plantations much as they did in the present provinces of Ilocos Sur, Tarlac, Ilocos Norte, Cagayan and Isabela in their home country. During that time, the Spanish colonizers had a virtual monopoly of the tobacco trade through their company, the Tabacalera.

The world-renowned La Flor de Isabela cigars (named after Queen Isabella II) were first cultivated in the Philippines in the Hacienda San Fernando, Hacienda Isabel, Hacienda Antonio and the Hacienda Luisita (all of these haciendas were later purchased by the Tabacalera or the Compañia General de Tabacos de Filipinas). After Mexico declared independence (1815), the trade of the Manila Galleons was broken. The Tabacalera shifted the cultivation of these cigars to Cuba since the Philippines was too far to govern without Mexico in between. The Isabela cigars achieved much fame due in part because of the American’s appetite for cigars when Havana was a Las Vegas-style playground before the tenure of President Fidel Castro.

One of Cuba’s classic regional stereotypes, the guajiro is Pinar del Río personified: an amiable rural hick whose spiritual home is venerable Viñales, a serene visitor-friendly settlement ringed by craggy mogotes (flat-topped hills).

Mogotes are isolated, steep-sided, residual, hills, which are composed of either limestone, marble, or dolomite and surrounded by nearly flat alluvial plains. These hills typically have a rounded, tower-like form. This term was originally used for karst hills developed in the folded limestone in the Sierra de los Organos, Cuba. This term is now used internationally for karst hills, which are surrounded by alluvial plains, in the Tropics regardless of whether the carbonate strata in which they have formed is folded or not.

Sit back and relax as you watch this interesting video which seems to stroll back in time…thanks to YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU5X4XcXvb0