Viñales

             Saturday’s are our days off from class that we use to travel around the great country of Cuba.  At the bright shiny hour of 8 o’clock, Profe took us to the great city of Viñales, about two hours west of Havana.  Within the span of about four hours, we had toured a tobacco farm where they dried tobacco for cigars, seen the mogotes, walked through a cave that was a hideout and escape route for runaway slaves, and taken a boat ride in an subterranean cavern.

            The tobacco farm wasn’t actually in the city of Viñales, but about 25 kilometers outside right on the side of the highway.  Our driver, Jefe, knew this particular farmer and stopped there because Jefe gets free corn from him in return for bringing tourists.  This was one of the most eye-opening experiences that I fully did not expect to be interesting at all.  Tobacco is planted during September, November, sometimes even in December in Cuba and then after three months is harvested.  The farm that we went to had two different stages already harvested and one more that would be harvested sometime in the coming weeks.  When the tobacco is harvested two leaves are tied together at the stems and then tied to a piece of string and strung over a pole to be hung on one of thirteen levels in a drying shed.  You would expect the smell of tobacco to be overwhelming when you walk into these sheds (some of which are glorified huts).  However, that was not the case at all.  After the tobacco reached the perfect form of “seco”, or dry, they would be tied into giant bundles and shipped to a factory where women trained by years of practice would pick out which leaves were to be used for which type of cigar, based of course on quality and size.  I’ll continue the explanation of this process once we go to the factory where they process the tobacco and roll the cigars!

            The next place that we went was to the top of this mountain to see what the Cubans call “mogotes”.  Mogotes are these plateau-like mountains that have nearly sheer cliffs that rise almost a mile straight up.  They were formed when giant slabs of stone rotated from their original positions in the bedrock and were forced upwards rapidly causing a sheering sensation.  Of course, this whole process took place thousands of years ago so weathering and tree growth has diminished their grandeur a little bit, but believe me they are still incredibly intimidating.  Also, the weather was bad today with lots of rain and mist and fog so it felt like we were in the middle of a Jurassic Park movie. 

            The last two places we went to were actually caves underneath two mogotes that slaves used to hideout from plantation owners.  The first one was an intense maze that if I had been running away and fearing for my life I know that I would have gotten lost in right away.  The stalactites and stalagmites were INTENSE!  The second one that we went to was just as much of a maze, but at the end of the maze was a river that ran from underground the mogote all the way to the ocean.  Slaves running away from abusive plantation managers would use these caves in the exact same way as the slaves in the United States used the Underground Railroad, so it was an interesting similarity of a harsh time during both of Cuba and the United States history.