On Cuba: Stirrups and Cigars

After days of meandering around Havana, sipping chocolate drinks at the Museo de Chocolate and eating coconut pastries, Alex and I took a bus (such a nice bus!) to the tiny village of Vinales, 3.5 hours from Havana.  Vinales rests in a valley surrounded by limestone formations and covered with tiny plots of farmland, mostly tobacco.  The road there was smooth and straight (we saw few other vehicles), the bus was air conditioned, on time, and looked newish.  So nice!  We passed fields of rice and sugarcane and stopped at a small reservoir with a floating trampoline that blew my mind.  Why didn't I think of that?

Luis, the owner of our Havana casa, made arrangements for us to stay at the casa of a friend.  Margarita was a warm, motherly woman, famous, she tells us, for her beer chicken (it was splendid).  She gave us guava juice and called in someone's nephew, Able-the-guide, to take us horseback riding through the valley.

While Alex and I are in possession of many talents, we're not exactly experienced horsewomen.  Which is to say, our horses knew their way (and knew we didn't) so they ignored us (rightly so) and our bums were smarting within minutes.  My stirrups were way too long for me, which meant that I spent as much time airborne as I did in the saddle.  The sound of my bum hitting the saddle no doubt warmed the hearts of chiropractors everywhere.

We followed trails that skirted fields of newly planted tobacco, sweet potato, black beans, and rice.  The few men we saw working the fields all wore the same kinds of clothes: leather hats, shirts unbuttoned in the heat, baggy belted trousers, gum boots, and a cigar dangling from their lips.

Alex and I discovered how challenging it is to dangle one's cigar when we stopped at the shack of a leathery old man for a break.  He made us rum drinks from coconut water, honey, grapefruit juice, and rum, served in a coconut.  He also showed us how he roll cigars.  All the farmers around there were granted land by the government on condition that they grow tobacco.  Ninety-percent of what they grow is for the government.  Our old man ferments his 10% in fruit juices, cinnamon, and honey.  He seals them with honey, too.  The cigar he gave us to smoke was even dipped in honey (Alex, always willing to think the best of me, thought it was my slobber).

So we drank rum and smoked cigars and watched the vultures and the approaching rain and double rainbow and I think it was one of the best afternoons ever.