Cuba - Viñales

A four hour bus ride west from Havana, Valle de Viñales is a UNESCO site and the best example of a limestone karst valley in Cuba.  

It's a beautiful place and consequently draws a lot of tourists.  Getting off the bus, I was confronted by a group of very aggressive women touting rooms to rent. I literally had to put my head down and butt my way through them.  The place I intended to stay was booked up but they said their mother had rooms also so we jumped on the guy's electric scooter and headed to mom's.  (Electric scooters are very popular in Viñales) 

  
Mom was Estella, a quiet, sweet elderly woman with a couple of rooms in her lovely small home.  

I wasn't sure this was the best option for accommodations and was a little put off by the electric shower head so only booked one night.  After wandering the few blocks into town and seeing what else was on offer, I went back and booked Estella's for my entire stay.  Downtown was one of those typical backpacker scenes: bars with American names, storefronts touting every sort of tour and activity, ATVs racing around and scammers on the prowl.  Almost every house in town advertised accommodations.  

In addition to the tranquility at Estella's, it turned out that she was an excellent cook.  I wound up eating every meal there except for trying out her daughter-in-law's cooking one night which was also good but not as good.  I would rate her chicken dinner as one of the best meals that I've ever had.  Sorry no photos of it.  I was too busy eating.  All the meals started with fresh, fried plantain chips followed by a big delicious bowl of hearty bean soup, often with pork or chicken, and a nice salad.  That would have been more that adequate but then the main course came:  options of beef, pork, fish or chicken.  The chicken was my favourite.  It's hard to describe how she prepared it, a big leg of chicken, maybe sauteed with herbs and spices, tender enough to eat with a fork, surrounded by pan fried sweet potatoes and potatoes.  Oh so succulent!  Dessert was offered as well but I could never finish the dinner much less eat dessert.  The amount of food served seemed excessive to me until I remembered something I'd heard some time ago.  This was that the Cubans don't eat the same food they make for the tourists and that the leftovers from these huge meals supplement their diet.  I don't know if this is true but would help explain the quantities.  

One of the places that Lonely Planet highlighted was called Valle de Silencio, the Valley of Silence, reputed to be a tranquil retreat from the busyness of the popular tourist areas.  There were no directions for getting there but I thought I had an idea from looking at a map so I rented a bike and set off to find it.  I followed the main highway for probably 10 kilometers through beautiful farm land and between the limestone karst formations called mogotes.  

I saw no indication of the Valley and finally asked a number of different people where it was.  The most consistent answer I got was that the turnoff was all the way back in town, nowhere near the direction I`d gone.  Except one taxi driver who said there were many Valle de Silencios. So I pedaled all the way back to town, lots of uphill and headwinds, and asked Estella where the Valley was.  She seemed very certain and gave me directions.  Back on the bike for a steep uphill for a few kilometers until I saw the sign to the Valley.  Eureka!  I followed the rutted, dusty dirt road steeply down, down, down and wound up at a cheesy tourist place on a man made lake that called itself Valle de Silencio.  This was it?  If it was, it didn't deserve the hype.  So I walked and pedaled the bike up that road, becoming covered in dust from the horse and car borne tourists until I reached a little restaurant where I stopped for a beer and chatted with some locals.  The guy who lived there had a little gazebo type thing where he proudly showed the flowers he grew. 

I was a bit hungry and asked if they had a snack, just a little something and I wound up with another one of those huge meals very like what Estella made though nowhere near as good.  Totally satiated, I pedaled back to my casa, full but without seeing the real Valle de Silencio.