Between Mountains and Valleys
In the heart of the valley, the picturesque town of Viñales is located. For a number of reasons, time seems to be standing still in this village since its foundation of New Year's Day 1879. Its main street, sporting tall pine trees (Pinus caribaea) on both sides stands before the wooden and brick houses roofed with red Cuban tiles, featuring huge verandas that nearly hang over the sidewalks, as if they were letting visitors in the houses.
Almost at the beginning, the Don Tomas Restaurant –a lovely two-story building once owned by a merchant named Gerardo Mier and built in the late 19th century- is currently serving the Delights of San Tomas, a chef's suggestion that consists of rice, different kinds of meat seasoned with tomatoes and spices and served hot in an earthenware dish. To wash it all down, the owners serve Trapiche, a beverage made of Cuban rum, ice, angostura bitters, honey and sugarcane threads
Close to that restaurant, the local History Museum –a neoclassic mansion featuring thick columns and a small porch- gave shelter to Cuban patriot Adela Azcuy Labrador, a.k.a. La Capitana Viñalera, who had been born on March 18, 1861. During the 1895-1898 Independence War, the Cuban Liberation Army assigned her to the sanitary team. Thanks to her courage and bravery in 49 battles, she was promoted to the rank of captain.
The downtown area is dominated by the main square, an open space marked off by backed benches. A bust of Jose Marti, erected by veterans of the 1895 Independence War, has presided over the plaza since 1929. The main square is crowned by the headquarters of the Spanish Colony, built in 1884 and now home of the House of Culture. Next to it, a former drugstore is now the Viñales Art Gallery. The Parish Church, concluded in 1883, is small and takes one of the corners of the plaza. The temple is also meeting grounds for street vendors who peddle souvenirs and Pinar del Rio-made works of art. The church is also the venue of Viñales Fashion, a yearly international event that gathers fashion designers and runway models.
Garden of Charity Concealed in the vegetation, surrounded by a living hedge, a small tunnel that comes before a porch where ground fruits dangle and the love for the harvest is the name of the game, The Green House of Tenderness welcomes you home. Its structure –like its dwellers- is a complement to a leafy evergreen woodland that has been forged through the years by two wonderful elderly ladies who have surrounded themselves by a number of plants. These two special flowers in a garden of petals, ferns, fruit trees, exotic plants and other endemic species are the Barbara (Caridad) and Carmen Miranda sisters, two women who have fulfilled the longstanding desire of their late father, who in 1918 bought this acre of red soils and planted mammies, avocados and other fruits in it. Eighty six years of love and dedication have passed by and now there's no doubt this is the country's loveliest orchard. The hospitality and traditions of these two ladies with a green thumb let visitors taste the finest fruits and the best homebrewed coffee they have ever had. Sa quick stop at their place could turn out to be an endless talk about nature and life that always comes to an end with a profound friendship. You'll be forever trapped in the magic and spirituality of this encounter.
The Two Sisters Valley Driving past the town, some three miles westbound, a humongous fossil canyon caught between a couple of petromorphic heights meets the eye. The Sierra de Tumbadero or Mogote del Valle (1,318 feet), both to the east. To the west side, the Mogote de Pita (820 feet) and Santero (984 feet), these two known locally as the Mogote de las Dos Hermanas (Two Sisters Round-Top Hill). The crag was carved onto the rock by no other than the insignificant Palmarito River, a watercourse that saw better and more plentiful days in past geological eras.
The inner chamber is dominated by a small valley, home of the Two Sisters camping site. Far to the west, right in an open cove, the Prehistory Mural stands tall. The contrast of the red-tile roofs and the Cuban deep blue sky at the campout site is simply appalling. It was opened in 1982 and features 42 roomy cabanas with private bathrooms. Next to a jutting cliff on the round-top hill, an exotic swimming pool also serves as a perfect nightly setting for entertainment. The Jurassic Restaurant serves great Cuban cuisine. An exhibition hall –dealing exclusively with prehistory- gives the place a touch of singularity.
Prehistory Mural In early September 1959, Antonio Nuñez Jimenez told President Fidel Castro and Celia Sanchez about his adventures around the Viñales Valley, where he had unearthed fossilized marine life, the skulls of huge alligators and aboriginal evidence in nearby caves.
Out of these recollections came the idea of painting a huge prehistory mural and the Mogote de la Pita was the choice made by Cuban painter Leovigildo Gonzalez, student of great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. The work began on September 6, 1959 in a space of 830 feet long and 393 feet wide, perhaps ranking among the world's biggest murals ever made. As many as 64 workers made their contribution to the work of art, local peasants who were tethered to parachute reins and thick ropes. A telescope and a bullhorn were used to give directions to the makeshift painters across the giant board; lines were being marked with brush touches. The width of the paint marks and the colors being used determined the figures to be splayed on the mural. Thus, those farmers, who had never taken a brush in their hands, created megalocnus, plesiosaurs, ammonites and many other species that trace back the evolution of the island of Cuba.
A the base of this colossal piece of work, an intimate facility serves the best roast pork money can buy in Cuba, a trademark that singles out Viñales as an ideal spot for rest and relaxation as you sink your teeth in this juicy meat, exclusively cooked with great professional expertise.
The Sierra Guasaca underground system is a group of caves who were first explored in the 1980s by the Guaniguanico Cave Exploration Team. Its discoverer, Hilario Carmenate Rodriguez, chanced upon one of the cavern's mouths during his own birthday, a reason that prompted him to give it the suggestive moniker of Birthday. Shortly after that, a group of young cave explorers from GEDA (acronym in Spanish for Group of Speleology and Adventure Sports) took on a mission to scour those round-top hills and registered 25 more caves, thus increasing the length of the cavern system to 10 miles. A considerable amount of fossils have been found inside this cavern, making it one of the most important underground fossil and bone deposits of the entire island nation, with approximately two million years of age.
The Jose Miguel Cave, located on one side of the Viñales Mountain Range came into being as a result of a lateral slit cut through by the river and that eventually carved the Puerta de Ancon Canyon and molded the rocky haven known as Los Helados, creating one of the most spectacular views of the vicinity. There, limestone erosion and deposition come together to form a hard-to-describe image.
Popular tradition has it that somewhere between 1909 and 1913, former Cuban President Jose Miguel Gomez attended a banquet inside the cave, a fact that allegedly made locals name the cave after the President. In 1996, travel agency Rumbos requested local cave explorers to hook up the cave with the western cove by means of a tunnel, on the other side of promontory of the mountain range. This accurate work provided an underground access to El Palenque Restaurant, a place where the culture and traditions of African slaves, including their gods, are recreated.
Circular and open huts –similar to the kind of aboriginal housing that popped up all across the island, especially in eastern Cuba- were built by runaway slaves on the premises, giving way eventually to current towns and villages. The houses are painted in the colors of some of the Yoruban deities: white for Obbatala, red for Chango, blue for Yemaya, yellow for Ochun. Gods and goddesses brought from Africa and that underwent a syncretism process upon arriving in Cuba.
In this restaurant, lunch or dinner consists mainly of fowls. All meals are accompanied by live music and dances performed by a local folksy company that imaginarily take visitors to another culture and another time.
The San Vicente Valley Less than a mile north of the Jose Miguel Cave, other underground cavities get in the way. This cavern system is known worldwide as the Indian Caves and belong to the underground system of the Sierra de Guasasa.
Eighty four years ago, these cavities were accidentally discovered by a local peasant. By 1925, a small grocery store and a fondant were built across from the entrance. In time, the eatery became a bar and restaurant that caters superb Cuban food.
In 1953, the cavern was outfitted with electric light following the construction of a small power plant that supplied electricity to the neighboring location of San Vicente. Visits to the cave, that included boat rides down an underground river- increased dramatically. Today, the place features a bar and restaurant, built in 1962.
Walking into its mysteries is like piercing the heart of a millenary book written by Mother Nature. The entrance comes right after a ladder that leads visitors to the third tier of the cave, where they are welcomed by an underground landscape made up of secondary formations of different sizes, a ruse used by the leaking water that has trickled its way out day after day for several millions years and has patiently dissolved the calcium carbonate only to deposit it in a thousand shapes and give birth to an indescribable world.
After a 270-yard hike down a high-ceiling dry gallery, visitors get to the wharf where they may hop on a boat to tour the zone flooded by the watercourse of the Zacarias River. The experience of sailing aboard a motorboat through an underground cavity really packs a punch, especially when travelers start gazing up at the inside of the cave and are suddenly taken aback by a ray of sunlight that leaks through the exit rocks and trumpets the end of the journey.
At a stone's throw of the Indian Cave and inside the San Vicente Valley, there's lush vegetation that lures visitors to meditate and sit back. In a restaurant built inside the forest, patrons may enjoy a great meal as they listen to warbling birds and catch the smell of wild flowers. A suggestion for a good wholesome meal? Cuban pork meat together with boiled root vegetables, black beans and rice.
San Vicente's Medicinal Waters In 1838, the owners made their first attempt to commercially use the waters healing mineral waters of the San Vicente Valley. In 1840, neighbors who had built their summer getaways on the premises were already making use of those waters. In the early 20th century, Gustavo Porta Capote bought the San Vicente farmhouse. In a partnership with an American entrepreneur, he built a small wooden facility with shared bathrooms that eventually panned out to be the first hotel in the location. In 1923, Cuban-Australian Pilar Mateus started running the place. Her personal charm that she put into the service prompted locals to name the lodging the Pilar Hotel, visited by boldface names of the arts and politics. As the fame of the medicinal waters was on the rise, Gustavo Porta Capote decided in 1928 to start building the Rancho San Vicente Spa. Cuban writer Dora Alonso described her visit to the region with these words:
“(…) I found two hotels; a modern facility with pool, tourists and drinks, and another one to the right, made of wood and painted in orange, surrounded by trees and flowers and near a river full of butterflies (…)”
The San Vicente Hotel is ingrained in the midst of the territory's natural environment. It has 33 air-conditioned double cabanas with private bathroom, pay-TV, international calling system and a pool, let alone the springs of medicinal waters. In this neck of the woods, experts offer sessions of bath therapy, massage, mud therapy and beauty treatments. Paraphrasing Dora Alonso's remarks, there's still some romanticism and charm left in this paradise-like environment.
The Valleys of Santo Tomas and Quemados Only 13 miles southwest of the Viñales town, there are two peaceful places: the valleys of Santo Tomas and Quemados de Pineda. They are divided by the Sierra del Quemado (1,500 feet high), yet bound together by the Grand Cave of Santo Tomas that runs through the mountain range from southeast to northwest.
The Moncada and Granma communities are perched on this valleys. The former one can't be more picture-perfect, with red brick houses hedged with green gardens in which roses, fruit trees and coffee plants are combined. Founded in 1960 in a strip of land that belonged to the Santo Tomas large estate, the facility evolved into the country's first state-run cooperative and eventually into the so-called People's Farm. Its construction hinged on the basic principle of respect for the peasants' traditions, so spacious houses separated from one another by backyards and gardens were built.
On August 31, 1959, Cuban President Fidel Castro, following a conversation with farmer Leandro Rodriguez Malagon in the Mesa Cave, ordered the formation of a troop made up of a dozen peasants in an effort to capture the gang of Corporal Lara, a murdered who had served in the Batista regime. Thus, the National Revolutionary Militias were founded to fight off the fledgling counterrevolution that had been born right after the 1959 overthrow of Batista. The success of the military action in Bay of Pigs two years later meant to be the first defeat of the U.S. Imperialism in Latin America. Today, a mausoleum contains the mortal remains of those who have shed their blood for the Revolution, the first militiamen who formed that first troop and were known as the Malagones.
Las Avispas (The Wasps) Cave lies 137 feet above the level of the valley, with one of its entrances now serving as a viewpoint that gives visitors the possibility the entire scenery, the community and a breathtaking panorama of the sierras: Derrumbada, Viñales and Pizarras del Sur Heights.
Inside its majestic walls, a team of dry-behind-the-ears local guides will help travelers scour the beauty of the underground landscape. Moving down that array of shapes and colors, you get to the La Palma Hole, in the heart of the sierra. The absolute peace and quietness inside the primary woodland is stunning. No sign of human touch over this magnificent natural masterpiece. On one side of the Hole, the Owls Hall, teeming with huge stalactites of several dozen feet that the morning sun wakes up from the eternal dream of the world of darkness. At the end of the trip, trekkers go down to the Gallery of Pearls, where tiny and precious round rocks, glazed by the force of the water, flash the marble-like whitish color, the result of calcium carbonate piled up on the core of the rocks that resembles legit gems.
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