DAY 6: PINAR DEL RIO PROVINCE

Some brief observations on changes we may see coming in Cuba.  Cuba experienced extreme shortages of economic goods and services in the 1990's and early 2000's, during the so-called "Special Period," subsequent to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and concomitant loss of Soviet economic support for its allies, Cuba in particular.  Some new assistance has been obtained by allying with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, and from early but burgeoning Chinese investment.

The Cuban government has reluctantly admitted that the economic model of the Revolution has run its course and lost some of its pertinence.  Economic reforms which allow small entrepreneurs to open private businesses were enacted over the last decade, and adaptation to independent business seems to be accelerating.  For the first time since the Revolution, there is a legal real estate market (Cuba has had no such market; homes were occupied, essentially by government assignment, and then were mostly handed down or traded).  Some two hundred legal, private occupations have been approved by the government, and there are now entrepreneurial restaurateurs, auto bodyshop workers, real estate agents, and, as of January 2014, automobile dealerships.  How the government perceives that Cuban society reacts to the "opening-up" of the Cuban economy, whether changes be beneficial or deleterious, and to what extent the government can agree that such changes remain "socialist" in spirit, will do much to determine outcome.  There is a long way to go.  When the state-run Peugeot dealership in Havana commenced private vehicle sales in the first week of January 2014, the model that sells for around 40,000 USD in the US was listed at 262,000 USD. The average monthly income in Cuba is around 25 USD.

With stratospheric prices like that, classics will be around Cuba for a long time yet.

Pinar del Rio province is the westernmost province of Cuba, to the southwest of Havana and stretching all the way to the western point of the island.  The city of Pinar del Rio is a little over 100 miles from Havana, and then it's another 20 miles north to the town of Viñales, our destination for the sixth day.  Accompanying us on this trip was Evelyn de Dios, retired art professor at the University of Havana, and specialist in Cuban popular art.  She had arranged most of our encounters for the ensuing two days.

Pinar del Rio province is rural and agricultural, claimed to be prototypical "guajiro" country, where the pace of life is relaxed and slow.  Pinareños have been cast as the butts of Cuban ethnic jokes, much as we in the US josh about Norwegians, Polacks, or Aggies.  We found the people, in our limited and mostly structured contact with them, to be delightfully friendly, outgoing, and as sophisticated as anywhere else in Cuba.  We talked, in downtown Viñales in the church square, with a young fellow who hails from a nearby village.  He comes over to Viñales specifically to visit with tourists, and he exhibited a very keen curiosity about our group, where we were from, what we do for a living, what Arizona and Nuevo Mexico are like, and so on.  What's more, he just wanted to talk – he didn't try to sell us a single thing.

A modern 4-lane highway, Autopista Nacional, connects Havana with Pinar del Rio. The Autopista lacks a paved shoulder, the lanes are a little narrower than we are accustomed to, and the road, albeit smoothly paved, is uneven enough that our long bus would irregularly commence a rhythmical forward-and-back pitch, like riding sea swells.  None of this mattered, until we saw that a rival bus had pulled alongside in the inside lane, seemingly from nowhere, and for the next five miles, at 60 mph, we could have shaken hands with the passengers had the windows been open.  In that bus, folks were grinning and laughing stupidly.  I think we were too apprehensive to laugh much or to look stupid.  Admittedly, someone from the other bus has probably written this same story.  Finally, their driver pulled ahead and we didn't see them again until a rest stop about 20 miles on.

West and south of Havana the countryside is rolling hills with farms, small lakes, and flat grassy fields interspersed with small mottes of trees and occasional large fields of sugarcane.  It is magnificently green out there.  Sentinel-like palms jut out of the fields. As one gets further west, sugarcane gives way to fields of tobacco.  December is balmy and humid.  Clouds intermittently sit atop a low, forested mountain range to the north and obscure its peaks.  Until this range blocks the view, the ocean is visible a few miles to the north, and it's easy to forget that this area, despite mountains, is not much above sea level and is seriously impacted by hurricanes.

Tobacco barn, near Autopista rest stop
Odd to have high power lines in fields worked by animals

Farm dwelling. Pigs are populous.
A lot of homes and cafes have caja chinas.

Raising the next generation of pulled pork

From Havana to Viñales requires a little over three hours.  West of Havana, a two-lane highway branches to the north toward the coast.   The road sign says:

                                                                         MARIEL –>

Yes, the road goes to THAT Mariel, coastal town of Boatlift fame and source of the term "Marielitos."

Our roadside rest stop, out in the boonies, rivals and exceeds those on interstate highways in the US.  It has paved parking, shade, a gift shop, an open air bar and grill with seating, and clean restrooms with their usual matrons offering towels for tips. Prices of consumer goods here, whether rum, cigars, snacks, sodas, what have you, are exactly the same as in the government stores in Havana.

We glanced off Pinar del Rio city and took a small scenic road to Viñales.  Sugarcane gives way entirely to tobacco fields out here.  The road to Viñales skirts a lake, then twists and bends up the mountainside through a low pass and down into Valle de Viñales.  In the town proper, our local guide Yaniel boarded, and stayed with us the rest of the day.

Yaniel

Valle de Viñales is not only a Parque Nacional de Cuba, but is also a UNESCO-designated world heritage area.  UNESCO recognizes that the locale combines unique natural beauty, a manner of living, and an economic biome worth preservation.  About which, more down below.

We lunched at Restaurante La Carreta, an open air spot with thatched roof of thick palm leaves.  Vocalist Yamila and her band greeted us at the top of the steps, with music and "Hello, Americans, welcome!!"

Yamila

The food was local Cubano, and Yamila and band were a talented quartet doing popular Cuban and Afro-Cuban music throughout lunch.  They have a CD (yes, we did).  Dave cometió un error pequeño.  He said, ill-advisedly, to the guitarist, "Yamila sounds a little like Gloria Estefan."  The reply:  "NO!  Mejor que Estefan!  Como Yamila!"

Paintings by local artists adorn the walls in La Carreta.  In the first pic of Yamila, some can be seen.  At least one departed with us (hello, LV!).

Twixt restaurant and town, there lies a Parque Nacional enclosing a Parque Estado. The latter features a limestone mountain, riddled with caves after the fashion of Carlsbad Caverns or some of the limestone caves in Texas or Arizona.  The entrance of this cave is accessed by boat.  Many in our group clamored to stop.  Yaniel demurred, saying that he had a clear understanding of the boundaries of our itinerary.

Valle de Viñales (I now recite Yaniel's presentation from memory; accept the following description at your own risk) was beneath the sea, until more recent geological times.   The land was higher than today, layered by millennia of shellfish, bony and other maritime deposits.  After recession of the sea, the strata were perforated by complex cave systems.  Erosion, sinking and collapse have left peculiar vertically-sided limestone hills, once the walls of caves.  These are called "mogotes."  The ceilings are now the valley floor.  Mogotes are the distinguishing feature of this valley – the signature that merited the attention of UNESCO and of uncountable tourists and artists.  The valley is riven by perennial streams of great beauty, which nurture large trees.

Valle de Viñales is the greatest tobacco growing country in the world, and very much is given over to that agricultural pursuit.  Cigars consist of filler, leaf roll, inner wrapper, and outer wrapper.  The tobacco for the world's most sought-after cigars comes almost exclusively from this valley.  Only the outer wrapper does not – tobacco for it is grown primarily on Isla de Juventud, off the southwest coast of the main island.  Viñales produces illustrious brands:   Cohiba, Montecristo, Pártagas, etc.  Astonishing to learn that "the real deal" comes from a place as geographically circumscribed as this isolated, rare valley.

After lunch, we trucked on into Viñales and were treated to a detailed, comprehensive tour of a tobacco processing facility, El Despalillo.  Technically, as I understand it, a despallillo is a facility where tobacco leaves are destemmed, cured, and dried.  When the leaves exit here after several months, they are fully prepared and ready for rolling into finished cigars.  Yaniel, clearly, is expert about the industry.  The step-by-step process, from field plant to cured tobacco to cigar is an amazing thing.  (BTW, any cigarette smokers who read this, just so you know, your preferred product is the Biblical chaff.  It's made from the inferior leaves and unusable detritus, culled out and discarded by the ladies you see below.  You're smoking the stuff on the floor.)

Almost all employees in these plants are women.  In such a critical industry for the nation, if the women do their job well they can earn far more than laborers in other lines of work.  The tobacco industry is thoroughly revolutionized.  Even Marxists know the market for the world's best tobacco (it's the whole world, except for the US).  The walls of the despalillo are rife with revolutionary slogans.  At least for this part of the Cuban economy, the communists have done very well.  Of interest, workplace discrimination against homosexuals is not permitted, by law.

El Despalillo

The stuff on the floor?  Cigaretttes

La Jefa

Prominently posted

Ready for the aging shed

Time cards reveal punctuality and well-defined breaks.

Viviana Rives, our lovely guide

Final product, with local wrapper

"Each day we must perfect that which we did yesterday"

Ready to label and ship

Labeled for destination

Tobacco cultivation is so intense in Valle de Viñales that fields edge right up against the processing plant.  The fields are worked by hand.  It must be that the subtropical growing season is year-long, because plants are at various stages of maturity.

In town, the cooperative community center, Ventana al Valle, produced for us an exhibit of local artists and craftspeople, and a variety show.  Teenagers and/or young adults performed music, dance, and comedy, and there was even a short fashion show.  Word leaked out, and just-released school children and folks from the neighborhood drifted toward the free entertainment (especially the entertaining clumsy gringos).  When the trash collection truck came down the street, the driver shut down and he and his compadres also ogled the show.

D has since disposed of spare tire:  Oh pork! Oh rum!

Jonathan V and Chris J get down!

No, no, no!  Demasiado borracho!

Fidel le gusta la que ve!

Post finale, we hustled to the bus to check in at our hotel.  We wish we had stayed longer and mingled more, and had more time to thank the gracious people at Ventana al Valle for their hospitality.

Hotel Los Jazmines perches on a ridgetop, with a breathtaking vista over Valle de Viñales.  There are two main buildings and a row of casitas.  Our group had second and third floor rooms looking north and east, which proved fortuitous, as the illustrated narrative for day 7 will show.  In keeping with the gravitational challenges way up here, and the venerable age of the hotel, just enough water pressure is present to flush and shower – barely.  That said, it's so gorgeous that a lean-to would be sufficient accommodation.  After check-in, sunset was nigh, so we used the brief daylight remaining to stroll around and explore the grounds:

Michel, our driver, in the hotel foyer

Mogotes, from our room

Tobacco barn

Adam and Eve set the tone

Poolside bar and upstairs dining

Hotel Los Jazmines Lobby

This guajiro was riding around in remote parking.  After posing, he asked MJ if she'd like to ride also.  Well, sure!

It was impossible not to glance, surreptitiously, at this couple by the pool.  There is a story here, and we're totally guessing what it is.  Officially, what we're guessing does not happen in Cuba.

"Komm, lass uns gehen"

The gloaming

For dinner, we bussed back down the hill a mile or so.  We could have walked.  We almost did have to walk back.

Our host for dinner was Paladar La Ladera.  As we trooped in, chicken and pig roasted over a fire in the front yard.  Behold.  Our main course in preparation.  These were whole animals.  I'd say seeing the pig was slightly gruesome, but it is THEIR culture. When in Rome, etc.  Again, a terrific dining experience in an open air setting, with mojitos and congenial chefs and waiters.   

La Ladera

The evening at La Ladera offered two other never-forgets.  First, see that slight lip, where the wood floor of the main dining area joins the hallway to the baño on the right? Coming back the other way, Dave hooked his toe under that, and did a full out header into the dining area.  Athletic reflexes, a certain plasticity of condition, and the soft, bouncy character of the wood served to protect him from serious injury.  Well, actually, from any injury at all.

Well-trained MJ and Sara patiently await their mojitos

Insalate

Calabasa

Yuca

Tamal

Moros y Cristianos

Arroz amarillo

Pollo

Puerco

Event #2:  Once dinner was done, and goodnights had been said, we returned to the bus.  The schedule had us going to an interactive performance of music and salsa dancing.  But almost everyone was tired and wanted to end the day at the hotel.  Michel climbed into the driver's seat, turned the key, and "RRRRrrrrrrrrr.  rrrrrrrrrrrr. rrr………." It seems that some accessories were left on during dinner, draining all the charge from the battery.  An uphill walk back to the hotel was inevitable.

Given our admittedly exhausted and sated conditions, what follows may seem phantasmagorical.  But Dave and MJ will vouch for the truth of the narrative.  The bus sat, dead, in a dusty parking lot.  The scene was only dimly lit, suffused with weak yellow-green from a few outdoor lamps.  Then, wraithlike, men materialized from the encompassing darkness, talking in Spanish.  They gathered at the rear of the bus, and began to push.  Men in our group joined forces with them (David W of Kentucky, do we remember you?).   In this hazardous position, below and behind the bus, men were pushing the bus UPHILL, shouting in Spanish and English, "Don't stop!  Don't stop!" The bus inched forward, at most 1 mile an hour.  Michel popped the clutch, and.....it started!!  Muchissimas gracias á los hombres de La Ladera!

Back at the hotel for a nightcap and a visit outside by the pool.  Jonathan V graciously offered Dave an extra Cohiba, and MJ and Dave sampled Ron Mulata Añejo Gran Reserva:

The Mulata was 1.5 CUC for 2 ounces (USD ~ 1.75).  

To bed, to sleep soundly with patio door wide open.  Unaware that we'd be stunned almost speechless when we looked out the next morning.