Viñales Day 1

As the sun rose over the Viñales valley, we rose from our beds ready for our day of hiking to a Tobacco Plantation.

We had a hearty breakfast and set off with Sandro, our guide for the day, who we were assured spoke English well.

About 3 minutes into the drive there, we worked out that he spoke about as much English as we spoke Spanish - near enough to zip.

A friend of mine, Scott, had told me about a crappy hike he did when he was in Cuba through a Tobacco plantation with a guide who didn't speak English. Pretty sure we ended up on the same hike.

Disregarding this, the scenery was absolutely stunning, and we tried to work out as much as we could about it all and we think we got the gist of the whole thing. Apparently the best months for planting are November / December, it takes 3 months to grow, and then after it is harvested, it takes a further 3 months to dry out in their drying rooms. At one point we were so sick of the uselessness of the guide, we started our own tour and started pointing out made up facts about the region.

We went to the actual farm house, where one of the farmers showed us how they hand make the cigars. His English was excellent, and he explained the whole thing very well.

I finally got to smoke a cigar, and it was absolutely lovely. The farmer was saying how that they have to give 90% of their crop to the government as the quota, and that they're allowed to retain 10% for the purposes of selling to tourists. He said that the process they use for handmaking the cigars in the farm is to remove the stem, as it contains 70% of the nicotine in the tobacco plant. This is to make it a lighter flavour. The ones that they make, they soak the leaves in honey, grapefruit and rum to add to the flavour. The hand-rolled cigars are sealed with honey as an adhesive, and it also had honey around the mouth area of the cigar. It was bloody awesome.

During the hike we also went to a cave, which was actually really impressive, however due to the lack of resources of the country, unfortunately it wasn't as exploited as well as it could have been.

Cuba so far has us feeling torn in two - absolutely loving it, and despising it in equal measure. Despite all this, on the balance of things, Cuba does still rock.