Cuba: Outside Havana

After spending three days in Havana, we hired a car, and drove southwest to Vinales, and then down to Trinidad. With our trusty Rough Guide to, erm, guide us, we stumbled across some fantastic sights, sounds and people.

Quick Tips:

Eat at the smaller, family run restaurants, not the hotels. Stay at the family owned and run B&Bs, which are much cheaper than the tourist hotels.

Beware of Cubans hitchhikers who get in your car to "help you find your destination".

Best Way To Get Around:

The M&Ms (My name for them: sort of like Thai tuk-tuks, but encased in a plastic shell) are great fun, and you can goad them on to race your mates in another one).

Gorgeous. The rooms were clean, the food was good, and they mixed a mean Moquito:)

The environment was fantastic, and the view from our bedroom was spectacular.

What more do you want??

This hotel is reputed to be one of the the best in Cuba, and did not disappoint us. A great location, good food, fantastic views, clean rooms and a great pool. $40 per night.

Paradise.

We drove down there from Havana, stopping on the way at the Spa in Soroa (if anyone has ever played the game "Myst", then the domed mud spa will remind you of the observatory).

We stayed at "La Ermita" hotel, which had views of the Mogotes that were simply stunning. The Mogotes are a series of hills much like the sugar laof mountain in Rio.

The food was good, the rooms clean, and the countryside was spectacular. 'Nuff said.

Just down the road, on a trip to find a good pic of the largest Mogote, we decided to take a detour, and ended up by chance at a caving school. they had tours of the caves, accompanied by experienced cavers. We decided to take the shorter 1 hour tour, but then another Brit couple turned up, and we all decided to do the full monty 2.5 hour tour.

The caving was strenuous, but the coral like stalactites at the depths of the caves were amazing. I would have paid the full price for the entire trip just to have seen them. Go there.

Other memorable sites: Las Terrazas biosphere, which has a great hotel (Moka), the Che Guavara treetop village (again, we just stumbled upon this one) which was straight out of Myst, and others....

We stayed in one of these family run B&Bs in Trinidad for $20 per night including breakfast. The landlady offered us dinner for $8 each, which was a superb three course meal served in a small enclosed patio at the back of the house. The food was much better than most of the hotel meals that we had eaten in Havana (grilled lobster) and the setting was quiet and beautifully decorated.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the place, but it was recommended by Julio at Casa Munoz, which was full.

By the way, Julio was very helpful when we were robbed by a hitchhiker who we picked up when we got lost just outside Havana, accompanying us to the police station, and translating for us.

The Autopista to Trinidad was a bugger to find, and this young guy came across to us at a set of traffic light, and offered to help. He said he lived on the way to Trinidad, and would show us how to get to the Autopista if we gave him a lift. After picking up loads of hitchers, I didn't think twice, but should have when he told us to do a U-Turn.

(Vague alarm bells did go off in my head at this juncture, but I thought I was being paranoid, since Cuba is such a safe country. Having been to many other much, much more dangerous places in the past, I brushed it aside).

He did take us to the Autopista, and asked to be dropped off outside a house. Then he asked for $4 for his services, which I thought was a bit of a cheek. I gave him $2, but he got out of the car in an odd way, seeming to shield something, which is when I realised that I had left my camera on the back seat. Doh!

I ran after him for a while, but he was younger and fitter than me. The fact was that my camera had started to malfunction about three days before, and the exposure time seemed far too long (the camera would indicate 1/200th of a sec, but expose for about 1/5th).

So...I was robbed. Hopefully the guy flogged it to someone he knew, who then kicked the living daylights out of him for selling dodgy goods:)