Biking Through Valle de Viñales

After we left Havana, we went to Viñales, a small-town west of Havana. We rented bikes to explore the Valle de Viñales. The valley is famous because of the mogotes, which are steep limestone Mountains with a flat top. The mogotes are all that are left of a huge cave system that collapsed millions of years ago. There are still smaller caves in the valley.  On the sides of the mogotes there are lots of plants and trees growing. In other parts it’s just bare rocks that some people climb. While we were biking, we noticed a lot of different types of trees, pines and palms and a lot of other ones we don’t know, growing at the bases of the mogotes.

One of the days we rented bikes we went to see the Mural de la Prehistoria, a big mural that is 120 meters long (about 360 feet) on a side of a mogote. It was designed by Leovigildo Gonzalez Morillo in 1961 and took 18 people 4 years to paint. The mural is supposed to represent evolution with huge snails, dinosaurs, sea monsters, and humans. Our guidebook said that the mural was “either impressively psychedelic or monumentally horrific.” I personally think the valley would look better without it.

We biked through a lot of farms. The farms were growing pineapple and lots of tobacco. Tobacco is the third most important industry in Cuba. We also saw harvested tobacco being dried by getting hung upside down on wooden poles in the field. Most of the farmers still till by hand and with oxen and horses. One of the days we were biking we went to lunch at an Agroecologica Restaurante where they were growing produce right outside of the restaurant. They had corn, pineapple, yucca, lettuce, carrots, eggplant, cabbage and more. In Viñales there were also lots of banana trees and sugar cane fields.