Viñales Day 2

We desperately needed to access the internet as we had a few loose ends to tie up. Even though there is the technical ability to do this in Viñales, it turns out that it's just not that easy.

In Cuba you have to buy an access card to access the internet. They are costly, and we have found along the way that they can be a bit difficult to come across.

We went to the counter to try and buy one yesterday, but they told us they didn't have any. We came back this morning, and apparently they still didn't have any. This was not cool, as we really needed to sort out a few things, and we are sending a weekly email to our families to let them know we are safe. Unfortunately these are the joys of a socialist society.

We ended up pleading with the guy in the internet room, and he eventually relented and gave us a half hour card he had stashed away.

We finally connected to the internet, logged onto gmail, and... nothing. It just wouldn't load. We waited 5 minutes. Then 10. After 15 minutes of trying to get the page to load, we had to give up and conserve the last 15 minutes of internet time so we could try again another time.

After we had finished with this, we decided we were going to go for the 1 hour drive to Playa Jutia, which we had heard was a nice fairly untouristy beach. The roads down to this beach were shocking, even by Cuban standards, and we had to show our passport at the entrance to the Cays. Then we had to pay our $3CUC for parking. But WOW - when you see beaches like this, you can really fairly easily forgive a lot of the problems with the society. Amazing. Relatively deserted. Palm tree parasols to sit under, and a palm-frond bar. Crystal clear water, and sand that was so fine that you could use it on your skin like a mud scrub.

It's near a mangrove area, and I guess the combination of the mangroves and the coral nearby combine to give white mangrove mud almost. Either way, it was heaven on earth.

We had to move out of our accommodation today, but we found another place around the corner that we initially wanted to go to, and they were available and the place is awesome.

Once again Cuba has managed to enrage and enthral, all in the same day. Still one of the most stunning places we've visited though!