Viñales Valley, Cuba

View from the top of Los Aquaticos.  Viñales is a town among bucolic fields and valleys set among unique and dramatic limestone rock outcrops in western Cuba.  Many foreigners come here on their circuits of Cuba to explore caves, learn about tobacco production and relax amidst the idyllic scenery.  It is a nice escape from Havana. 

Our gang of travelers on our rental mountains bikes

Inside a tobacco factory where workers were separating the leaves for quality and size to eventually make cigars.

Drying bale of tobacco

Rolling up a sample cigar

Horse I rode for a guided tour in one of the valleys of Viñales.

Girl at a produce stand to whom I gave a toothbrush.

This was a common sign in Cuba, reading "Socialism or Death."

View from Hotel Los Jazmines

Trinidad, Cuba

The quaint, cobblestoned streets of old Trinidad...

Horse carriage crossing

Man selling bread from his bike baskets

Horses are still used and seen in the streets though they may be used in tourism on guided rides for foreign visitors.

Nearby Playa Ancon

The terrace from my palatial casa particular

Atop the mountain above Trinidad

View from a different guest house around the corner from the other

The town at dawn

Classic car in Santa Clara

Cienfuegos, Cuba

A UNESCO city on the southern coast of Cuba, Cienfuegos was settled not only by the Spanish but also by the French and so its architecture is more French than in other Cuban cities.  

School boys were eating some kind of local honeysuckle and posed in front of a banyan tree.

Horse carriages were the local form of shared taxis.

I met these two Mexican cousins in the bus station heading towards Cienfuegos.  We ended up hanging out and here we visited the 16th-century Spanish fortress, Castillo de Jagua at the entrance of the Bay of Cienfuegos.

In the canon

In the well

I visited the botanical gardens outside Cienfuegos.  It was once partnered with Harvard University and contains possibly the greatest diversity of palm trees in the world.

Some sort of bromelia

A palm with cactus-like spikes

Maybe a ceiba?

Some local sentiment on the highway...(Bloqueo = Embargo)

Classic Cars in Havana

All over Cuba, you'll see old American cars ("Yank Tanks") in the streets.  Some are private taxis.  Some are shared taxis called almendrones (big almonds) that ply major thoroughfares across Havana that you can jump in for a ride across the city for 10 Cuban pesos (like forty cents).  Some of these cars seem to be barely hanging together.  Instead of an ignition, they may just put two wires together and sometimes I would have to ask how to open the doors from the inside as the door handles had usually broken off.  But some of them had been reupholstered or had black lights and all had thumping loud music.  I enjoyed the thrill of being crammed in the bucket seats of the bumpy, lumbering American classic cars with several Cuban strangers, the driver changing gears with a gear shift in the drive shaft taking corners without power steering around crumbling mansions and seaside views.

Graffiti along the Prado

A Russian Lada along the Malecón.  (The old American classic cars were not the only cars on the streets.  Besides lots of Ladas, there are some modern, mostly European vehicles as well.)

Prado

In front of the Infanta Cinema, one of the locations of the International Festival of Latin American Cinema