Viñales is beautiful! A complete contrast to Havana in so many ways, it’s a great place to find quiet, fresh air and walks with incredible views. We’d originally booked just two nights here but I’d recommend three if you can.
We were in Viñales in early December as part of a 3-week trip in Cuba, so all my notes are based around my experiences as a tourist at that time. Please do check any dates/opening times/locations etc. if you’re planning your own trip – things change! Links are to websites if I can find useful ones, or Google Maps locations if not, so you can see where they are. Please also note this post contains some affiliate links, indicated with a ‘*’ – if you click them and decide to buy something I may receive a small cut of the payment, but it won’t cost you more. Thank you!
Contents
Pictures, please!
If you’d prefer just to look through my photos for now I’ve made a gallery of the photographs in this post here, but if you’d like to read my notes you can find them all below.
Top recommendations in Viñales
You can read my notes on what we got up to below, but if you are short on time here are my top recommendations on what to do in Viñales, plus you can take a look at my more general notes on Cuba, too:
Full disclosure: I got food poisoning on the first night in Viñales, so I don’t have as many recommendations as usual. I was just unlucky, Tim was totally fine (and I’ve checked TripAdvisor to see if anyone else had problems and couldn’t see anything), so although I can’t bring myself to recommend them, I’m also not going to name them as I’m pretty sure it was a one-off.
Top recommendations on a map
Full notes on my time in Viñales: how we spent 2 days
Travelling to Viñales
Mario, the host at our first Casa Particulair, arranged a Taxi Collectivo to pick us up from our Casa in Havana and take us to Casa Leyani y Osvedy*, where we stayed in Viñales. This was our first journey by Collectivo and it was quite an experience, involving a slight (unsuccessful) detour to the airport as somehow the previous passenger hadn’t paid, stopping for roadside meat (we didn’t have any so this wasn’t what gave me food poisoning), driving through huge amounts of smoke and full speed chats across the road with another driver. We were travelling with another couple who were also headed to Viñales and it’s a good way to travel long distances as the Viazul bus usually has only one scheduled trip per day, which isn’t always the most efficient use of time. You can read more of my notes on travelling around Cuba here.
First afternoon: Rocking chairs and fresh air
We arrived in Viñales at about 15:30, having been in the car since about 11:00, so we were keen to stretch our legs and get our bearings. It’s absolutely beautiful in Viñales, with stunning landscapes, cute houses and a generally more laidback vibe.
We stayed at Casa Leyani y Osvedy*, a cute baby pink bungalow with an immaculate garden and rocking chairs for all. Our host, Leyani, got us settled in, asked if we’d like to book a hike or horseback trip through the valley and let us know about the fridge with cold beer and water for a very reasonable price-very handy!
We went for a wander in the town, which is small but with plenty of cafés and restaurants, and had an excellent coffee. Coffee is grown locally so it’s particularly good!
Back at the casa we spent some time enjoying rocking in our chairs, watching kites fly and listening to the farmyard sounds.
We had a really lovely evening in the town, but sadly something seriously disagreed with me and the night was pretty grim.
Day 1: Internet and a striking mural
I was out of action today so all I’ll say is that Casa Leyani y Osvedy* was a very comfortable place to spend a day feeling grim and thankfully we were able to stay an extra night so I could actually see some of Viñales the day after.
Between making sure I was okay Tim managed to see a bit of the area while I was sleeping, so he’s stepped in to share his notes here.
Tim: We’d spotted in the Lonely Planet that we wouldn’t need SIM cards to access wifi, just the wifi access cards, so I went to town to try and work out the situation (read more about accessing the internet in Cuba here). I queued up with the locals at the ETECSA shop where a very friendly man let me jump in front of him to go in to buy us each a card, then sat in the city square at the public access point with all the locals doing the same thing. It was easier than I’d thought and if there hadn’t been such massive queues in Havana we could have done the same thing there. I emailed the next hotel and told them we’d be a day late and checked the football results.
I then went for a walk on my own into the valley. I can see why Leyani is going to be our guide. The footpaths are barely marked and multiple times I just walked into people’s gardens or farms. It doesn’t help that there are animals wandering around everywhere. One farmer, with machete in hand, just said hello and let me walk past into his farm. It very much confused me that it didn’t go anywhere.
Despite just being lost, the scenery was beautiful and loads of people just said ‘hola amigo’ as I wandered past. After an hour I grabbed us a cola each from a cafe and headed back.
In the afternoon I decided to walk to the Mural of Prehistory. It was about 3km through a quiet neighbourhood and then a couple of roads next to the huge mogotes (geomorphological formations) that jutted out of the ground. Eventually I could see the mural on the rocks. It’s absolutely huge and is really strange. It looks so out of place against all of the rocks but I figured that I’d come for the journey anyway.
On the way back I spied El Cuajaní, an absolutely beautiful restaurant and went in for a beer. They gave me some taro root crisps and explained that it’s a farm to table restaurant with an ever changing menu. I’d hoped to go back the following day-it was so lovely and the owners obviously really cared.
Day 2: Slow living, hiking and cigars
Jayne: I felt a lot better today! Still a bit weak but we walked into town to access the internet in the park by the church. We took it easy and headed back to the Casa to just relax in the lovely garden.
At around 1pm Leyani came to take us on a hike around the Valle de Palmarito.
The scenery is so, so beautiful. The mogotes reminded us of Halong Bay (really more Nimh Binh I think as they aren’t in water, but we haven’t been there) and it was all so lush and green. Leyani showed us how farmers grow beans and corn together so the corn shades and supports the beans, pointed out plants and told us about the terrible impact of hurricane Ian. She described how it lasted from 3am to 3pm with a weird calm at 9am, presumably when they were in the eye. Places that hadn’t previously had water at all now had ponds, many drying houses for tobacco had been destroyed, having a terrible effect on the cigar industry, and people who lived in the valleys were having to move up into the centre. She pointed out a couple of houses with king palm leaves as roofs – those had not been badly damaged at all-the wind presumably just went through them as they do on the trees. She also gave us a bit of insight into her life, too.
We then had a talk from a tobacco farmer who showed us how they make the cigars, purely from the leaves, his matured with rum, honey and with the vein of the leaf removed to remove some of the nicotine. We don’t usually smoke but it was a good experience to try one right there where they are made. We were guided to dip the end you hold in your mouth in their own honey, which was a nice addition. They also gave us a sample of guava rum, and the mojito they made with it was probably the best we’d had so far (sadly I thought I’d better just have a small taste, not being at my peak!) He also showed us the coffee he makes, which smelt amazing. If only we had more space in our luggage!
We continued our walk back, taking in the beautiful views. We’d hoped to go to the restaurant Tim found yesterday, but we really should have booked a taxi as in the dark it was just too far to walk. Instead we went for the plainest meal I could find in town, which was a bit of a shame but all I could manage.
Leaving Viñales
After a lovely breakfast in the morning sunshine we were picked up at around 8am by the taxi Collectivo Leyani had booked for us. We picked up another pair of travellers and whizzed off. We were headed to Cienfuegos but Collectivos run set routes each day, so we were taken to Havana, where we swapped to another car going to Cienfuegos.
Collectivos are really the most efficient way to get across the country but they’re definitely an experience in themselves: cars in varying conditions, often involving random stops to pick up and deliver packages, (again, efficient use of the journey) and restaurant stops.
Eventually, at about 15:00, we were in Cienfuegos.
Viñales was absolutely beautiful and very different to any of the other destinations we visited. I’d highly recommend spending a bit of time here if you’re planning a trip to Cuba.
Next stop: Cienfuegos
If you’d prefer just to look through my photos without all the notes I’ve made a gallery of the photographs in this post here.
Notes on Travel is a blog by photographer Jayne Lloyd, noting the things I found useful to know when I was visiting Viñales in December 2022 as part of a 3 week trip around Cuba. I’ve tried to be accurate but please do check for up-to-date information before going as things are always changing! I apologise for any mistakes, please do let me know if you have more recent info, or if you have any recommendations you’d like to add!
* This post contains some affiliate links, indicated with a ‘*’ – if you click them and decide to buy something I may receive a small cut of the payment, but it won’t cost you more. Thank you!