Cuba - Viñales

With our sweet Suzuki Jimny, we went to Viñales. It was a complete contrast to Havana, as it is a beautiful valley with huge rocks, incredible nature, and our hotel was quite secluded. Great view and we could enjoy the sunset in the evenings.

One day, we visited the cave 'Gran Caverna de Santo Tomás,' which is apparently the largest cave in Central America. Well, that's a matter of opinion ;) But it was definitely nice to see, and our guide was also great. He always cracked jokes like, 'Oh yes, the tour takes about 2 hours, but if you have some Chinese tourists with you, it will be four hours just because of taking photos,' or 'Stay close to me, four years ago, I lost a Chinese person. We found their cameras three years later. All Canon, a good brand.' Oh man :D We also saw some bats and stalagmites and stalactites. Please don't ask me the difference, I wasn't paying attention, oops. He even played music with them :) It was really cool. The only annoying thing was the helmet, yes, I know, safety first and all, but I was sweating like crazy underneath it. The water was just running down :D After that, we went zip-lining. It only cost 8 €, so basically nothing. Of course, I had to try it, and it was really fun. The guides were also very kind and took good care of us. On the way back, we stopped at 'Mural de Prehistoria.' A huge painting of the history of evolution, about 120 x 180 m. You can either pay for admission or do like us and park a bit further away. You can still see it, and it's enough because it's not soooo beautiful :D sorry

On another day, we visited a tobacco farm that we found on Maps.me. It was actually a stroke of luck because we didn't have to pay anything, and the owner personally took us around. We saw the plantation, how and where the tobacco is dried, the stable for his horses, and then he showed us how to roll a cigar. If you want, you can also try one (all organic, according to him). Really nice, so we definitely gave him a tip. Now we wanted to be a little sporty and drove our car to the Cafe 'Raul Reyes' and parked there. Just walk around, there's always something to see in the beautiful surroundings. We climbed up to a cave, luckily we came out on the other side. It was a bit tiring in the heat, but the view afterwards was great, and we wanted to know what was behind the rock anyway. The travel guide mentioned something about a Ceiba tree. I thought to myself, 'Tree, okay, maybe a huge tree that I could climb again. That would be great.' But yeah, it was just a tree :D Then we wanted to visit a natural lake, but when we arrived, there was anything but a lake. It seems we came at the wrong time, completely dried out :) But yeah, a little bit of exercise is also good, right? In the evening, we went to the village to have something to eat. We met an older couple that we had met during our walk. They told us that just two or three years ago, there were only two restaurants here. It's crazy to think that now there are at least 30, the whole street is crowded. It's somehow frightening how quickly everything has changed here. I wonder how it will look like in the next few years...