Let's go to Vinales, Cuba

 

On day three in Cuba, I decided to do a day trip to Vinales. Now you can either go to Vinales or you can go to Varadero, which is a beach town. I'm not much of a beach person, so I decided to go to Vinales which consists of mountains. I love mountains! It's located three hours away from Havana and it ended up being my best day in Cuba. 

Let's get into it. The driver picked me up early. He was supposed to be there at 7:00 o'clock. This is an all-day trip because of the distance so be prepared to get up early and arrive late. He picked me up at 6:45 and we rode in an old-fashioned car. Now, these old-fashioned cars were very cute. I've taken pictures of them, and I rode in them the day before. But baby, for three hours..... No, it was too much of a ride. My butt was hurting and the road to Vinales is full of bumps .... so the ride was not pleasant. I was very happy to arrive in Vinales.

Vinales views

As soon as we arrived, we were greeted by our guide for the day. He told us about Vinales; their way of life, customs and what we would be doing for the day. We looked out at the view which was breathtaking.   A lot of the things that they do is old-fashioned, which we saw driving in.  They do their farms with ox instead of machines. The food here is fresher and the atmosphere is calmer. Honestly Vinales reminded me a lot of my hometown ... small, country, welcoming and relaxing. Lots of trees and crops. I stayed reminiscing all day. It was a great get away from the business of Havana. 

After we went out the viewpoint, we took a ride to the mural. What I thought was truly interested about the mural is Diego Riviera involvement. If you know Diego, he was the husband of Frida Kahlo. I thought that was interesting since I am a huge Frida Kahlo fan.  The mountain is huge, and I do not know how they did the mural on it before technology came along. On the mural, there is a black line, and the black line represents a hurricane that hit Cuba. The water came up to that level. If you are standing in front of the mural and you look at that line, it's like, oh my God, how did anybody survive? We discussed hurricanes a lot since this is the region that suffers from them the most and I'm from Florida. Another interesting thing about the mural is that as soon as we arrived this dog runs up to me and I'm normally afraid of dogs. But this day I don't know what was going on, but this dog followed me, and only me, around the whole time. This would be like the theme of my day. Dogs just came up to me and stayed by my side. 

After the mural, we walked over to this pina colada place, and their claim is that they have the best Pina coladas in the world. 👀The world Craig!  Now I was a little skeptical because I will always say the best pina coladas in the world come from Puerto Rico. Period!  I have never even thought to mention Pina Colada and Cuba in the same sentence. 🤷 But they make the Pina Coladas and I'm not going to lie .... the Pina Coladas were really, really good. I murdered that Pina Colada. It went down so fast. I had a virgin Pina Colada because the heat in Cuba is insane.  I really don't understand how you mix heat and alcohol, but they do it all the time in Cuba.  I'm not that type of person but if you are an alcohol person, they allow you to pour your own alcohol, which is pretty cool. The guys definitely took advantage of this and became LIT-lit!  If it wasn't so hot or if I was going to be in an air-conditioned place, then I would have loaded that bad boy up as well. 

After that, we went to an underground cave. Um, so walking into the cave, you have to be very careful. It's really wet and slippery. I almost fell and that was so funny because I slipped but didn't fall. However, my Apple watch came on immediately and was like, "it looks like you have fallen". Thank you, Apple watch for always having my back. 😆 When we get down to the bottom of the cave, we're waiting with another small group to get on the boat to take us through the cave. All of a sudden, all the lights go off. I'm thinking, is this a part of the tour? It was not! So, we are in the dark.... underground in a cave, right? This guy next to me starts freaking out and all I can think is thank God for anxiety medicines because I was cool the entire time. We get on the boat, and we go through the whole cave..... with NO lights. When we get to the end of the tour, the lights come back on. So, they're like, let's do the tour again?!?! OK!!!! Why not? We go back through the cave again with the lights on and when we exit the cave, when I tell you it was the most beautiful sight..... you have to see it for yourself. I'm going to post a video, but the video will not do it justice. It was so beautiful coming out the cave. 

After the cave, we went to this tobacco plantation.  We had lunch, which was really, really delicious. It was served family style, and consisted of chicken, rice and beans, and mango and vegetables. It was farm to table, which was a little sad because all of the animals were behind us while we were eating the chickens. 😟Once again, a dog sat by my leg the entire time. Never leaving my side until I got in the car to leave. I probably should look this up because I promise the universe was sending me some type of sign. 

Afterwards we went over and had a lesson on rolling cigars. You cannot come to Cuba and not do something cigar related. Not only was this a tobacco farm, but they also had coffee and some other things. The interesting thing about the tobacco is that they spray it with alcohol and honey. The honey was super delicious. I personally did not smoke the cigar. I am not a smoker in any way, shape or form. However, everyone else in my tour who did smoke the cigar said it was the best they ever had. Some of them are not even smokers and they still said like it was amazing. We experienced tobacco, honey and had rum shots. I ended up getting bit by a Cuban ant and having a major reaction. Thank God I had Claritin on me. The pain was immense, but my guide talked me through it. As long as I didn't touch the affected site, it would go away in 20 minutes. Those were the longest 20 minutes, but he was right. The pain went away and never returned. My guide was not only a guide but a doctor too. No for real ... he is a doctor in the community. I'm glad he was with me.

Not a smoker but definitely am a poser lol

To get to the plantation we rode horses up the trail and I thought I was confident with the horses. I rode a horse ONCE when I was a little girl and thought it was nothing. I have not ridden a horse  as an adult but how hard can it be to ride a horse? I rode a camel in Egypt. Ya'll once I got up on the horse, I started panicking just a little bit because it wasn't riding horses on a flat terrain. It was riding horses UP a mountain and down through water. So, no that was NOT for me. Luckily my guide Guiermo was so nice, and he guided HIS horse and MY horse at the same time. So, all I had to do was just sit there, move up and move back when the horse was going other up the mountain or down the mountain, but nothing else. I passed two kids riding their own horse without assistance. They looked at me crazy but guess what ... I didn't care at all. 😂

Me and Carmelo!

Once we finished with the tobacco plantation and everything else, it was time to ride the horse back. I'm like, oh my God, I do not want to ride this horse back. However, instead of going up the mountain, we went a shortcut due to a thunderstorm heading our way. Now I'm thinking to myself, why didn't we do the shortcut on the way to the farm? We started our journey back to Havana, which was a three-hour ride. There was a car accident which made our 3-hour ride turn into more like a five-hour ride. I didn't appreciate that because when I tell yall my butt was hurting. It was HURTING!!! But overall. it was a really good trip, and it was something that I highly recommend. 

Would you go to Vinales?

My time in Havana Cuba

Why go to Cuba? That is the question that I was asked so many times. 🙄 Well I am from Florida, and I grew up learning so much about Cuba, Fidel Castro and the entire Cuban missiles ordeal. As I've gotten older, I've wanted to know more about it, so I decided to do a trip to Cuba. 🤷 I didn't want to go by myself because I have heard so many horrible stories but no one wanted to go with me. I never let that stand in my way so I booked the flight anyway. In the end, I'm glad that I did go by myself because I learned so much and was able to truly enjoy the country.

When I arrived at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, there was a 2 hour wait. There was paperwork that I had to fill out in order to go and I was the only black person in line. So, I was a little nervous.  While in line, everyone was telling me all of these horrible things about Cuba. I was beginning to think that I had made a mistake.  As soon as I got off the plane, I noticed that everything that they said, was not necessarily true. First and foremost, the people were so nice They greeted me and were warm and welcoming.  That's the first thing I noticed. The second thing that I noticed is many of the Cubans looked just like me and embraced me. 

My driver was already at the airport, so we got in the car and drove to Havana. It was about a 30-minute drive. As I was looking out the window, which I always do when I'm on a drive in a new country, I noticed that Cuba kind of looked like any other country that I've been to. 🤷 It looked like it could have been Egypt or Guatemala. I really want you all to understand that I had been told horrible things, so I was expecting the worst in every way imaginable. 

I pulled up to my Airbnb and it was very nice. I stayed at the White House which overlooked the water. I met my host, Anita, who was amazing.  I got dressed for my photo shoot and caught a taxi. We proceeded to walk around Havana and take pictures. While everyone was super friendly to me, they were not always friendly with my photographer. My photography session was fun and a great introduction to the island.

After the pictures we went to drinks for Mojitos and talk. This was my first introduction to Obama. Well I'm lying. Anita also spoke about Obama when I arrived, but this was my first in depth talk.  It would NOT be my last. The people love him. My mojito was just okay which was a little disappointing because I had heard that the drinks in Cuba were amazing. 

I went back to my Airbnb and there is a new restaurant right next door to my Airbnb. So, I decided to have dinner there. The tacos were amazing. The pina colada was pretty good. At this time, I'm kind of realizing that everything that people have told me about Cuba so far is not the truth because the food was flavorful. They made me bring salt and pepper with me, filling my head up with lies, and I didn't need it at all. 

On day two, I did a tour of Havana. We did it in the car. It was the best tour. I really enjoyed it. We went to the Jesus statue that I didn't even know that they had. Then we went to Revolution Square, which I was very interested in because I wanted a picture with the infamous Che Guevara building.  I really enjoyed my time there. We went through this forest where they sometimes do Santeria rituals and the smell...... Oh my God...... Because they do animal sacrifices out there the smell was good and terrible, which was kind of sad because the forest itself was so nice. However it was really beautiful and inside the forest there is the oldest tree in Cuba, which was breathtaking. 

Afterwards we went to this part of Cuba created by Jose Fuster. It is called Fusterlandia and he basically recreated this entire community from an art perspective and made his house into a museum. It was very beautiful. If you love art, this was the place for you. At the end he rode by in his wheelchair.

Another thing that's going on in Cuba is there's a huge movement, kind of like the Black Lives Matter movement. It's called 2 + 2 = 5. You will see this all-around Havana.  

Afterwards we went to another Airbnb that is also a bar. I love this Airbnb because they have the cutest little chairs that were made out of bicycles. They were so cute. I really want one from my house and we had some drinks. I had a limonade, which was amazing. Cuba really has the limonade game on lock.  

Next, we to a Rumba.  We were warned before we got there to not take any big items with us, to stay close to our guide and etc. So, I was a little nervous because why do we need to be warned???? 🤔 But when we got there, the party was not happening because the host of the party was in Mexico. Whew! Instead we ended up just walking through the hosting site. They are very, very much into African religions that were brought on to the island when the slaves arrived. As we walked, our tour guide pointed out different things that went with the different religions like the goddess Oshun or like this chair that was representing good luck.

After lunch we walked through old Havana.  I didn't really like this part of the tour because when you travel you always have the option to go into a slum, favela or shanty town.  I never go because I don't feel like their life and/or their lifestyle is something for me to look at as if they are an exhibit at the zoo.

We went to a flea market. I was very, very hot by this time. The heat in Cuba is not like anything else that you will experience and I'm from Florida! 😂 I decided to go to this ice cream market that ended up having the best ice cream. Oh my God... it was called wafer. But in the United States, especially amongst the black community, we call it bananas pudding. It was so good but ooh I don't know what they put in that ice cream but later on that night my stomach did not agree with me..... so be careful if you have it. 

We ended the tour by visiting the community that is the birth place of the movement the 2 + 2 equals 5. The first thing that I noticed is there were a lot of cops and the second thing that I noticed was the energy of the people. There were a lot of murals around in that area The people were dancing... poor but happy ... beat down but vibrant ... lied on but still smiling... resilient ... and that that is what stayed with me the most about my time in Havana, Cuba.