Cuba
Was grateful for the relatively early night last night as today started out fairly early. The hotel breakfast was pretty good, the highways in Cuba are a bit rustic, and the 3 hour drive from Havana isn't bad. The drive started through the nicer western outskirts (including embassy row) that honestly felt a bit like nicer neighborhoods in middle America, then proceeded to freeways that were pretty rough compared to interestates (United States) or the autobahn (Germany). Was still good to see the countryside, see some of the locals, and stop for a bit at what was clearly a large, well-established, and touristy rest stop probably two hours into the drive.
The most scenic view of Vinales Valley was the first viewpoint we stopped by; I get why people say it's beautiful. Descending into the valley was still pretty, although not quite as much-- although the closer you got to the forest-topped limestone hills still revealed details not visible before, including a very popular cave that was so large it includes a little boat ride down the back half for your entry fee. Pretty nifty and not an experience I had expected on this trip. Final exploratory stop before arrival at the casa particular (aka AirBnB) was a tobacco farm literally right at the edge of town. The tobacco farm tour and cigar rolling display was smaller and quicker than expected, but that honestly seemed to be very indicative of Cuba: while it's the largest of the Caribbean islands, and populated enough to have some real urban sprawl, it still mostly feels like a small country missing the crowds, scale, and density of much of the rest of the world.
Vinales itself is a pretty small town, not exactly rustic, but the feel you were clearly in more of a rural area as opposed to Havana was evident, even before the host told us that the whole area was in a scheduled power outage and would be til 6:20pm. One main street running east-west with a few more streets of houses running parallel, plastic water tanks on the roof everywhere given eloquent additional testament to the state of infrastructure in the area. Caught the approaching sunset from the roof of the casa particular before walking up and down town, with the last vestiges of color in the sky as I hit the western edge-- and then the electricty came back on.
Dinner was on my own tonight; there were some celebrations in a nearby park, but I ended up walking by a place that offered not only freshly-grilled chicken, but free wifi. Might have been the most appealing meal I had the entire trip; somehow I managed to resist seconds on the chicken, and the seafood soup I ordered as I lingered was pretty good. The cooked veggie side I got was pretty meh and wifi was quite slow (at least to social media), but not the worst place to linger before a cold* shower and bedtime.
* = I saw a tiny little hot water heater on the building, but while you got warm water for washing hands, showering was decidedly less pleasant.