Horizons Student Support Services Study Abroad - Havana, Cuba: Kevin Mercer

I certainly set myself up with a monumental task by choosing today to write this blog, since I have to squeeze all the things we did in Viñales into under 500 words. Today was our first time leaving Havana after our week here in Cuba. It was also RJ’s (one of our fantastic instructors) birthday, so we made sure to make the most of it for him. Agriculture was abundant on the countryside outside of Havana and cars were increasingly scarce as we got further away from the larger roads, slowly being replaced by motorcycles, horses, and ox driven carts. Another thing that grew more scarce on these smaller roads were straight lines as our bus drove on continually curved left and right around sudden corners.

What I’ll be able to write here about Viñales won’t do justice to what we experienced there, but I’ll at least try to tell you what we all did. The first thing we did was visit Las Cuevas del Indio which was a great spelunking experience. Experienced cave guides walked us through the cave system and onto a pair of boats where they showed us the cave’s rock formations as we moved through the underground river.

After that we explored Viñales town and tried our hands at haggling for all the artisan works being sold in the square before we left for our lunch destination. We all ate a feast of food grown feet away from our table at a restaurant atop a large organic farm. Due to the years of gardening I’ve done since I was a child, I was fascinated to see how they could grow so many different varieties of food plants in this one area. We were on a pretty tight schedule, so after a quick tour of the property with the man in charge, we rushed back onto the bus and headed towards our next destination, the tobacco plantation.

After getting off the bus, we were quickly introduced to a large thatch structure where the tobacco was set to dry for about two months out of the year. There we met the man in charge of the plantation who quickly demonstrated for us all, with his knife and a couple pairs of tobacco leaves, how a cigar was made. It was a spectacle to behold. Many cigars were purchased there soon afterwards.

Our last stop during our time in Viñales was an excursion to the painted mountains, which is a limestone cliff face covered in a giant, brightly colored mural. This was a nice stop that gave us a chance to pause and goof around taking pictures after a long day of traveling through this part of the country. Overall it was a very rewarding experience and today was one of the days that made me especially glad that I had this opportunity through Horizons. From the look on RJ’s face all day, I’d say today’s excursion also served as a pretty good birthday for him too.