Cuba, Feb. 9

This morning we visited caves that run under the mountains you see in this valley. They proved to be quite amazing. They had been formed by water flowing through the inside of the mountain. The result was very beautiful!

One of the promoted “sights” in this area is a painting which was done on the side of the mountain. I didn’t know it was relatively recent until I saw it in person. I thought it looked like it had been painted in the 60’s – sure enough one of Castro’s “friends” painted it in about 1966 on “prehistoric” rock. The whole thing seemed a bit hokey but then they served the free pina coladas and I remembered why we came.

From there we decided to head down to the sea to a small village. There were no tourists around not even a restaurant in the whole village. When a foreigner comes into a small town, the locals will offer cigars, rum, and usually lobster – so we had some (not the cigars).  We had this awesome lobster dinner washed down with mojitos and cerveza at a local woman’s home for 35.00 for the 3 of us. We headed back to Vinales for the night  and stayed in a casa particulaire with Julian (owner) and her son Marco. We also went out to a new music show.

Today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 97 years old – we miss you mom!