What to expect in the Viñales valley
Laidback locals and a sensitive approach to commercialization ensure that Viñales retains a sense of pre-tourism authenticity absent from other popular destinations. The tourist centres and hotels are kept in isolated pockets of the valley, often hidden away behind the mogotes, and driving through it’s sometimes easy to think that the locals are the only people around. Most of the population lives in the small village of Viñales, which you’ll enter first if you arrive from the provincial capital or Havana, and where there are plenty of casas particulares. It’s also one of the few places in the country that acts as a hub for independent travellers and is a good place to hook up with travel buddies. From the village it’s a short drive to all the official attractions, most of which are set up for tour groups, but it’s still worth doing the circuit just to get a feel of the valley and a close look at the mogotes. If time is limited, concentrate your visit on the San Vicente region, a valley within the valley and home to the Cueva del Indio, the most comprehensive accessible cave system in Viñales. Also in San Vicente are the Cueva de San Miguel and El Palenque de los Cimarrones, the latter a much smaller cave leading through the rock to a rustic encampment where runaway slaves once hid, but now set up to provide lunchtime entertainment for coach parties. Difficult-to-explore and little-visited Valle Ancón lies on the northern border of this part of the valley. On the other side of the village, the Mural de la Prehistoria is by far the most contrived of the valley’s attractions.
Best time to visit the Viñales valley
The valley supports its own microclimate, and from roughly June to October it rains most afternoons, making it a good idea to get your sightseeing done in the mornings. Mosquitoes are also more prevalent at this time of year and insect repellent is a definite must for any visit.
Cueva del Indio
From the Cueva de San Miguel it’s a two-minute drive or a twenty-minute walk north to San Vicente’s most captivating attraction, the Cueva del Indio. Rediscovered in 1920, this network of caves is believed to have been used by the Guanahatabey Amerindians, both as a temporary refuge from the Spanish colonists and – judging by the human remains found here – as a burial site. Well-lit enough not to seem ominous, the cool caves nevertheless inspire a sense of escape from the humid and bright world outside. There are no visible signs of Indian occupation: instead of paintings, the cave walls are marked with natural wave patterns, testimony to the flooding that took place during their formation millions of years ago. Only the first 300m of the large jagged tunnel’s damp interior can be explored on foot before a slippery set of steps leads down to a subterranean river. It’s well worth taking the boat ride here, where a guide steers you for ten minutes through the remaining 400m of explorable cave. The boat drops you off out in the open, next to some souvenir stalls and a car park around the corner from where you started.
Gran Caverna de Santo Tomás
Seventeen kilometres along the road west from Viñales village is the clearly marked turn-off for El Moncada, a scattering of houses that shares a sheltered valley with the magnificent Gran Caverna de Santo Tomás. The most extensive cave system in Cuba, with 46km of caves, attracts serious speleologists and small tour groups alike, but happily it has not yet become overrun with visitors.
Highlights of the 90min guided tour – which covers 1km of chambers – include surprising cave winds, bats flying about and underground pools. The knowledgeable guides point out easy-to-miss plants, deposits of guano, and, on level six, a replica of a mural. The mural is part of the evidence, as is the 3400-year-old skeleton found here, that these caves were once the refuge of the Guanahatabeys, the original inhabitants of Cuba.