Valle de Vinales

Vinales was our second stop in Cuba - a quiet town to the west of Havana that lies within a beautiful valley and lush vegetation is abundant.

Arriving on the main street in Vinales our Viazul bus was surrounded by desperate Casa owners shouting and waving their laminated cards advertising their habiticones Thankfully we saw a pretty, demure lady standing on the steps with a sign saying ‘EMILY’ - what a relief - we got a normal one!

We stayed in a Casa Los Pandaderos   - the amazing owner Midalys treated us like royalty. A delicious and fresh mango jugo (juice) on arrival really set the tone for the rest of her amazing food offerings for the remainder of our stay, The first night we ordered pescado (fish) and honestly the array of dishes on the table for the two of us was out of control. Alex was sure that the pescado had to be hidden in the soup, but low and behold I was right once again when two huge plates came out after the initial array with gigantic (and yummy) fish fillets and vegetables. 

Midalys speaks pocquito Ingles - so muchos Español for us! Although I have very minimal knowledge of sentence structure, my vocabulary is improving drastically. I never thought I would say this, but thank god for Alex’s audiobook that has taught him some Spanish. I have no idea what you would do in Vinales if you could not speak basic Spanish.

Evening sunset from our casa balcony

Vinales really does make you feel like you’ve stepped back in time. There are almost as many horse and carts operating as cars, and the men driving the carts all have cowboy hats on. The houses are small but brightly painted, and almost every porch is home to two rocking chairs which are often occupied by the owners. Walking down the street is very sociable and everyone says Hola! or stops in at each others houses for a chat. A collection of house photographs for you below, it's kind of like the Cuban version of Wisteria Lane without the bitches.

Best place to lay and watch the world go by

We embarked on our Horse Riding tour through the Valley the next morning. Our hungover guide was less than enthusiastic, but it was still amazing to trek through the plantations on the small horse routes that connect them all.

We saw a huge variety of fruit & vege plantations, we even saw Pineapple’s growing! 

We stopped in at a tobacco farm to meet the farmer, see his drying shed and watch him roll a cigar whilst he told us the process for harvesting and drying out the leaves. As part of the process he ripped the central vein of the leaf out which he informed us had the highest concentration of nicotine. Once the leaves were stripped of these veins, he placed them in a  bucket with water and after some time used the ‘treated’ water as a natural insecticide rather than including it in the cigars. His cigars are organic, but I am sure this part of the leaf is in hot demand at cigarette factories! Apparently Che & Fidel liked (or maybe still do like...) to purchase their cigars from farmers in the area - it is renowned for it's great environmental conditions for tobacco growing. Only the finest Cuban Cigars will do for those revolutionaries!

The actual rolling of his cigars was a lot more basic than we had imagined, simply rolling up the leaves until a thick cigar shape is formed (1 leaf at a time),  cutting off the edges & sealing with a dab of honey and leaving the cigar wrapped in paper or a type of plant leaf which I have forgotten, to dry out for approximately 5 days or so. 

Heading off to find the hungover cowboy. All the women walk around with umbrellas for shade in Vinales.

Tobacco drying house

Alex's horse taking a massive piss, it farted constantly also.

Tobacco grower shows us how he rolls cigars

Horse rest stop

Mid-morning Coco Loco drink with a pour your own rum element

After a delicioso dinner at an Italian place in town (Alex could’t face another feasting session at the casa) we headed to a sidewalk bar for a drink where we were accosted by the town strays who were chasing down a sexy white female on heat. At times there were three dogs humping, stacked on top of each other on Alex’s leg. 

The poor gal! 

The next day we rented two bicycles for a low $5CUC each and headed out to Cueva Del Indio - an amazing, and huge cave system that lights have now been installed in, giving visitors great views of the roof of the cave and a little boat trip through them. The bike ride out to the caves was spectacular! 

Alex managed to get a flat tyre en route so we stopped in at a wee casa on our way back to borrow a bike pump. Whilst Alex was carted off out back to find the elusive pump I was stationed with an elderly lady and he granddaughter who was in a teeny tiny play pen (1m x 1m max.) and whilst grandma prepared lunch the little girl pulled my hair and hit me and instructed me to pick up the small off-coloured beans her grandmother had given her as rejects from the lunch which she purposely threw on the ground. 

Peso pizza - delicious Jamon y Queso (Ham and Cheese) for 50 cents each!

After a mid-day heat exhaustion break we headed off to see the Mural Prehistoria. A 120m long painted mural on the side of a cliff face in a valley. Although it’s size was quite impressive, the mural did look like something a kindergarten student could have achieved (I noted that the mural of the blue whale outside Geoff’s Emporium was substantially better albeit a lot smaller than , so we decided to head to a camping resort nearby where we could swim in the piscina (pool). This camping resort was obviously a holiday hot spot for Cubans and we got a few stares upon entry. Aside from the dubious murky water, it was a very picturesque spot to have a swim - surrounded by mountains and eagles flying overhead. A bottle of vodka at the holiday camp shop was a meagre $2.50 CUC and although we didn’t indulge, a number of camp goers were having shots and enjoying the blaring European hits of Bruno Mars and J.T. blasting from the stereo.

After a day of horse riding, then a day of cycling I could no longer walk properly. Alex informed me that this was likely due to a combination of three factors:

1. Being a girl
2. Being unfit
3. Poor cycling technique

He admitted that I would have found the day of cycling (approximately 20 km) a lot harder, if not doubly as hard as he did due to the above.

We spent the night on the balcony of our casa eating a delicious Langosta (Lobster) dinner which was absolutely ginoromous and chatting to Midalys about her “Mi Amore” which we frequently heard her chatting to on the phone. He lives in Argentina but is headed back to Cuba at the end of Mayo (May) to head off on a 15 day country tour with Midalys. Very cute.

Looks like a backdrop for Jurassic Park huh?

Hanging out at the Cuban Holiday Camp pool - note amazing backdrop

The mural, see what I mean re: the one at Geoff's Emporium being better?

Havana

CUBA!

We absolutely loved our time in Cuba - it was such an amazing country to visit. The people we met had so many interesting stories to share, and they’re so vibrant! 

Even though personal access to the internet is illegal in Cuba, I managed to add notes onto my laptop so I have a few posts at the ready. 

HOLA HAVANA!

After a 1 hr sleep at a party hostel in Cancun, where a pre dinner activity involved dancing to the song: "da da da da da da TEQUILLA” and consuming shots on the word tequila, we caught a taxi to the airport at 3.30am to head to Havana.

Alex was a hot target amongst the customs officials when we arrived. Potentially due to his long hair (now worthy of a pony tail), or ever growing beard… or a combination of the two. The list of questions from the lady got crazy - she even wanted a huge list of the reasons why we had come to Cuba… Music, Architecture, Dancing, Beach, Culture - our reasons were all acted via charades as she could not speak ingles, and got more obscure as she continued to prompt us to add more. The kind señorita apologised after about 30min of questions and waiting and welcoming us to Cuba we were allowed through the sliding doors and free!

We stayed at Casa Lily in Havana - amazing, on the 13th floor of an apartment building in Vedado, with beautiful views and a room so nice I didn’t even want to shower with my jandals on. The best way to see Cuba is to stay in Casa De Particulars - rooms within family homes, that usually have their own ensuite. It is so much cheaper than staying in hotels & you get the benefit of chatting with the owners and sourcing great local knowledge (not to mention improving your Spanish!).

View from the balcony at Casa Lilly

An evening stroll around the neighbourhood to the Hotel Nacional, was followed by dinner Waoo Snack Bar where we ordered fish - a fillet approx. 8cm thick was brought out and we were advised that it was red snapper - ha! The streets are alive at night with people everywhere. We were staying on Avenue De los Presidentes - where the middle of the street consists of park like grounds with benches and statues of previous presidents. From our room and the terrace you can look out and see people meeting up all throughout the road. 

We met Fritha & Kieran at Casa Lilly, coincidentally they were also from Auckland and moving to the UK in August too. We headed out to the Museum of the Revolution the following morning - which was quite the experience. It had a star next to it in the Lonely Planet book - an honour usually reserved for only the creme de la creme of local attractions and restaurants. As none of us knew the full story of what happened back in 1959, we thought this museum would provide a great factual overview. The descriptions for each object / photograph in the museum were cut out like a child’s school project - a bit wonky and sides curling upwards. These descriptive cut outs gave us a real insight into what it’s like to live in a communist country like Cuba - there is no information regarding the deaths/ injuries that Che & Fidel’s army’s inflicted - nor any information on the negative impacts the Revolution has had for Cuba. They truly hate the Americans, and perhaps fair enough - there is an entire wall dedicated to various plots the CIA had supposedly organised against them including:

I haven't had any time to thoroughly investigate the truth behind some of these outlandish accusations, but word on the street from other tourists was that the CIA did indeed carry out a lot of bizarre plots against Cuba - so who knows! Once I do some reading into it I shall update you all.

At the entrance to the museum there are caricatures of various leaders that they Cuban’s have done speech bubbles around saying: “Thank you cretin for helping us to make socialism irrevocable” (Note George W Bush’s Nazi Helmet, and holding book upside down).

We did a walking tour of Havana Vieja and stopped off at the Camera Obscure. Having never seen one of these contraptions before we were quite amazed - the view we saw was in real time so people moving about the streets in Havana, very cool! We walked home along the stormy Malecon with waves crashing into the other side, rubbish from the ocean strewn across the road.

At the conclusion of afternoon nap time, we headed to the Hotel Nacional to treat ourselves to dinner in their ballroom. This is the hotel that Jay Z & Beyonce stayed in on their recent visit to Cuba and although it had it's heyday in the 1950's or earlier - it's still very grand and posh by Cuban standards. We had been to inspect it the evening before and for $25 CUC we each received 3 courses and a drink, not to mention free bread rolls and butter! It was a very ostentatious setting for 4 x backpackers from New Zealand. 

The dining room at Hotel Nacional

Dessert time at the Hotel Nacional

Dinner time ended with an ambush from the resident pianist attempting to sell us her CD and a faux Happy Birthday number for Kieran that we sung along to. We then moved on to the terrace to sample their cocktail menu and smoke the Cuban Cigars we'd purchased earlier in the day.

All class - cocktails & cigars on the terrace

The next day we explored the old fort, then headed back to Havana Vieja for some drinks and dinner when we happened to bump into some Kiwis outside a bar. We couldn't believe it when we realised we were all from Mt Eden - and it turns out that our new friends George & Jeremy are good friends with Jilly Mowat-Smith & Raewyn (Tim and Harley's Mums). We all headed off to a small plaza to catch the end of the local salsa evening, then a brewery on the waterfront for some local beers, then into a taxi to a cheap local restaurant for a fillet of fish for $4.50! Mojitos only $1.50.

You’ll all be relieved to know that I am enjoying the odd beer every now and then and managed to drink my brewery pint in record time to keep up with the guys.

Attempting a bit of Salsa

The architecture is absolutely mind blowing here, the most beautiful buildings … some painted and looking OK but some which you know in a previous life would have been the most stunning house on the block are now nothing but a facade on the front with the entire back of the house/building having fallen down. The two men from NZ we met told us about a friend of theirs who lived in one of these apartments, he was out at work one day and came home to a massive pile of rubble where his house had been - with neighbours desperately picking through it trying to find him as they thought he may have been in the house. God forbid if there were ever an earthquake here. And Dad - if the government ever decide to update their building policy the business opportunities over here would be endless!

I have also been brainstorming ad campaigns for paint brands where they could come to Cuba and sponsor a street or suburb where they painted every property - the before and after results would be spectacular. Only (major)  issue I can foresee is government approval to film/ get the paint in here!

Looking down from the old city fort 

Me outside my favourite building (in this particular plaza)

Beautiful ceiling in the Museum of the Revolution

Plaza of the Revolution - bit of a let down to be honest, was most definitely more carpark like than plaza.

More to come on the rest of our Cuban adventure soon! 

xx

Caye Caulker

Hola Amigos!

Admittedly I am pretty behind on my updates, but have been keeping notes and have quite a few updates to fire off! We're in New York City at the moment, or more accurately on a train up to New London - tomorrow we're off to watch the Harvard versus Yale Boat Race. 

Caye Caulker

Caye Caulker is in Belize, and from Chetumal Mexico only a 2.5hr water taxi ride away. We decided to head down there for 4 nights (9th - 14th May), after some rave reviews from people we knew.

Our Mexico Waterjets ‘crew’ gave us a hilariously scary safety briefing which involved him telling us that throughout the journey it was going to be very rough, and he would be asking passengers to move from one side or the other to balance the boat - and for us to enjoy the movie - TAKEN, great soothing movie option for people on a boat driving through gigantic waves. Customs and immigration was done on a tiny wharf in San Pedro, before heading off to Caye Caulker on a smaller speed boat driven by children that proceeded to break down at least 5 times making the usually 1/2hr journey over an hour.

Belize used to be a colony of Britain, and is still part of the commonwealth so everyone speaks English and has a Rastafarian vibe. The locals speak their own version of pigeon English called Creole - which we originally thought was some foreign language, as to the untrained ear it is very tricky to decipher. There was one Rasta cycling round one night who I thought was just yelling out “SA-WEEEEET” while he peddled through us - as if life was just sweet for him. Alex investigated further asking a local what he was up to, and turns out he was selling seaweed from a container on his bike, and had actually been yelling “SEA-WEEEEEED”. Hilarious.

After much discussion with the local guides as to which snorkelling trips had recently seen manatees in the area (Seacows), we decided to go with Carlos Tours. We spent a day on the boat at the marine parks in the area. The day was amazing, definitely the best snorkelling trip both of us had ever done (The photos speak for themselves!) even though we didn’t see a manatee. One of our stops was called “Shark & Rey Alley” - aptly named for its inhabitants. I was horrified to see that Carlos Jr was preparing food for the sharks to feed off the boat, and when we anchored and the feeding began I estimate there was about 30 - 40 sharks near the boat flopping all over each other, fighting for a place at the top for the food. Of course I refused to get out of the boat at first, but eventually Carlos Sr persuaded me and I jumped out far from the shark feeding frenzy only to be accosted by Carlos Sr and his Shark friend which he coerced me into patting. I have to say, shark skin is a lot rougher than I had been expecting. Alex noted that the stingray was slimy as expected though. I should note that these were apparently nurse sharks and the ‘friendly’ kind.

Carlos took a professional camera underwater so we bought the CD so we could remember the experience forever. A selection of photos for you below!

Swarm of Sharks

Eagle Ray

There are no beaches on Caye Caulker, so the majority of sunbathers / wannabe beach goers head to The Split - a split between the two islands of Caye Caulker caused by Hurricane Hattie in 1961. There is a bar and music playing so a great spot for a relaxing drink even if it has to be on wooden slats rather than a sandy beach. The 'island' which is in actuality a 'caye' was likely destroyed/split so easily due to being a Caye rather than an Island - more details on that here.

The Split

The bar at The Split

Alex making friends with the locals after we offered them our disgusting G & T's we purchased at the bar downstairs

Strangely there are about 5 or 6 supermarket/dairy type shops on the island all being run by Chinese people. They were not as friendly as the other people we met on the island and Alex was determined to investigate why on earth these grumpy shopkeepers would want to live in such a happy place if they were going to be so surly all the time. Word on the dusty streets was that the Chinese mafia are buying up a lot of land in Belize, and that they send mafia members to places like Caye Caulker to run these businesses if they’ve messed up or need to “do their time” so to speak. 

The food on Caye Caulker was amazing - if you’re heading there soon here are our top recommendations:

• Terry’s Grill - tiny roadside stand with Terry on a small grill with coal. He took over a year to develop his jerk chicken marinade and oh my god it is good. The shrimp sticks also went down a treat.
• Aladdin’s - Kebabs / Middle Eastern Food 
• Enjoy - super long wait, but bloody tasty!

We left Caye Caulker on a 7am ferry bound to Mexico, and we were accompanied by quite a few local kids catching the ferry to neighbouring San Pedro to school. One super cool kid who’s dad was one of the Raggamuffin tour guides got dropped off at the ferry by speed boat with his little back pack on. What a sa-weeeet way to get to school each morning! 

xx