Hear the infrastructure creaking
Trip Start
Nov 03, 2004
1
55
165
Trip End
Nov 23, 2006
Vinales,
Cuba
Monday, August 29, 2005
so beautiful. If you live in regular Cuba, all screaming tropical
vegetation, flat fields of sugar cane and tobacco and mood altering
heat, Viņales must seem like paradise on earth. Cool, dark, green
conifers grow near invitingly dank caves in the hillsides; massive
limestone pincushions, called mogotes, erupt from the valley floors -
Viņales is becoming an international climbing Mecca.
We arrived exhausted, grumpy, clammy wet and underwhelmed by the
scenery into the arms of the accommodation Mafia
Mogotes and sugar cane
. In the two dayswe were in Viņales it stopped raining and we experienced six power
cuts and three water cuts (half the time we were there we had no
power, a quarter of the time we had no water and about half of the
time those two lacks overlapped - this was due, apparently, to the
stress on systems caused by the kiss of Katrina (don't even ask
about storm water drains). We stood agog at the Mural de la
Prehistoria - a 120m-long mural painted on a mountainside. The huge
snails, dinosaurs, sea monsters and humans took five years to
complete and symbolise the theory of evolution. It is monumentally,
psychedelically, horrendous. We toured the beautiful Cueva del
Indio, marveling at the cathedral-like limestone pillars and
chandeliers. We glided under limestone draperies towards the
underground waterfall - once in the boat there was a power cut
Murale de la Prehistoria
.We ate, for the first time, at the casa. We never did manage to
figure out how many members of the extended family lived here - at
least five generations, but grandma did the cooking (and shouting).
She was determined we would waddle away from dinner both nights with
a typical meal consisting of salad, a half chicken each, a soup
tureen of black beans and one of rice, a trencher of fried potatoes
and fruit salad to complete the incapacitation. She fairly glowed
with our compliments and had left-overs to stretch for the family as
well.
