Viñales Valley

About this place

Viñales Valley is a karst depression of 132 square kilometres in the Sierra de los Órganos, in Pinar del Río Province in western Cuba. Limestone hills with steep sides and rounded tops surround its red and green floor. UNESCO listed it in 1999 as a natural and cultural landscape, for the traditional ways of growing tobacco that survive here. Tobacco is still grown on the valley floor by methods centuries old, and this hard handwork is said to give better leaf. Small farms and villages lived in since the days of the conquistadors are scattered across it, with simple colonial-era houses. Its culture grew from a mix of indigenous people, enslaved Africans and their free descendants, Spanish colonists and later Europeans. The finest sight is a huge limestone hill rising suddenly behind a green tobacco field, with a small thatched house beside it. From the viewpoints the valley runs out to a line of blue hills, with tall palms above the fields and thatched barns where tobacco dries. Many caves open in the hillsides, among them Cueva del Indio and Cueva de José Miguel. It is about 152 km from the Capitol in Havana in a straight line. You can hire a horse or walk between farms with a guide, so agree a price first. Morning is finest, with mist between the hills. The UK Foreign Office advises against all but essential travel to Cuba because of fuel, power and water shortages, so read the current advice before you plan.