Varadero to Viñales

Woke up not so early, but after getting too much sun yesterday, decided we might as well head off to Viñales. As the maps were very sketchy, it was a case of just heading in the right direction and hoping for the best. The drive from Varadero to Viñales was due to take about 5 or 6 hours, and we didn't decide to do this until after we had woken up quite late. As a consequence of this, we thought it might be a good idea to book some accommodation for Viñales once we got to Havana as we would be able to get a hold of a telephone and could make some calls. We booked a place called Villa Dona Hilda after the usual Cuban kerfuffle and were back on the road.

We pulled out of Havana at around 2pm, and headed down the Autopista towards Pinar Del Rio, which is in the general direction of Viñales  We made pretty quick ground and by about 2:30 were well and truly heading in the right direction. We decided that we'd get off the Autopista and take some other roads towards our ultimate destination for the day. As mentioned before, the maps of Cuba might as well be a map of the Earth from the Sun. We got VERY lost before finding one of our way points - San Andres - and once we got there, we were getting a LOT of strange looks from the locals. We ended up stopping and asking a local for directions in our ridiculous broken Spanish, and worked out that we were going to have to go back out the way we came and go through a place called La Palma, a 30km detour. By the time we had reached La Palma, it was about 5:30pm and we have been told not to be on the roads at night at all in Cuba - after seeing the condition of the roads, we have a rule where we need to be off the roads by about 6pm. Getting to La Palma FINALLY, we were on the right path, and we eventually rolled into Viñales at about 6:30pm - still daylight - JUST. We went and checked out the Casa we had booked and what can I say other than the Rough Guide to Cuba guide book was a little wrong about this place - it was not so great - and after the debacle of our "hotel" in Varadero, we were quite keen to get a place that was actually quite nice. We saw a place on the main road on our way in that looked absolutely lovely, so we went and checked it out - unfortunately it was fully booked for that night, but we were planning to stay in Viñales for 3 nights, and we asked the very kind host if she knew of other Casa's that were as nice as hers. We went for a bit of a walk, and checked out one other, and it was absolutely lovely and even though we're pretty sure we got taken by about $5CUC for the night, it was worth it to finally be writing this blog from a comfortable room.

We had a beautiful dinner of Lobster and Chicken and rice and beans (again... it's a staple for Cuba), and finally went to bed in a comfortable room with no noise.