Viñales

Before European settlement the hills around Viñales were home to a remnant Taíno population, joined over time by enslaved Africans who had escaped from the plantations. The limestone caves near the town, among them the Cueva del Indio, the Cueva de José Miguel and the Cueva de Santo Tomás, gave these runaways shelter, and the valley's culture grew from the mixing of Indigenous people, Africans and their free descendants, and Spanish colonists.

The area was colonised at the beginning of the 1800s by tobacco growers from the Canary Islands, who settled in the Vuelta Abajo region of the west. They farmed the red soils of the valley floor between the mogotes with methods that have changed little over the centuries, and built the small farms and villages of wooden and palm-thatched houses that still dot the valley. The town grew as a modest rural centre of one-storey houses with porches.

In November 1999 the town and the Viñales Valley were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for their karst landscape and traditional agriculture, as well as their vernacular architecture, crafts and music. The listing helped turn Viñales into one of Cuba's main destinations for visitors, and many families opened their homes as casas particulares. Hurricane Ian caused severe damage across Pinar del Río Province in 2022.

Viñales belongs to the guajiro culture of the Cuban countryside. Farming families of the Vuelta Abajo pass down the craft of growing, curing and sorting tobacco leaf, and the drying barns full of hanging leaves are part of the rhythm of the year. Many families trace their roots to Canary Island settlers, and the valley's culture also carries the influence of the Africans and Indigenous people who lived in its hills.

Music is part of rural life here. The punto guajiro, a sung form of improvised ten-line verses called décimas, belongs to this countryside, and in the town the Casa de la Cultura on the central square puts on music and other events most evenings. Cockfighting and rodeos are also part of country life in the west.

The town itself is quiet and close-knit, with a single main street of restaurants and services and side streets lined almost entirely with homestays. Tourism and farming share the valley: guides lead walkers and riders through the fields, and farmers explain the tobacco harvest and offer coffee from their own plots.

The municipality of Viñales had about 28,700 people in 2022, spread over about 700 square kilometres of hills and valleys, at a low density. The town is the centre, with one-storey houses, a church, a square and the bus stop, and the rest of the population lives on farms and in small villages across the municipality.

The economy rests on agriculture — fruit, vegetables, coffee and above all tobacco, grown by traditional methods — and on tourism, which has made the casa particular one of the most important sources of income in town. Horse owners, guides, taxi drivers and restaurant workers depend on visitors.

Daily life follows the national pattern of shortages of fuel, food and medicine, power cuts and queues, and some homestays keep generators running when the grid goes down. Farming families rise early to work the fields before the heat of the day, and evenings bring people out to the square.

Food in Viñales is farm food: roast pork for celebrations, rice and black beans, root vegetables such as yuca with mojo, a garlic-citrus dressing, and fruit from the family plot. Many homestays cook dinner for their guests, and the restaurants along the main street serve Cuban staples to visitors, often with live music.

Farms in the valley offer guests home-grown coffee, honey and fruit, and Pinar del Río Province is the home of guayabita del Pinar, a drink made with a small guava grown in the mountains of the province. Ingredients depend on what the shortages allow.

The everyday Cuban repertoire fills the rest of the table: moros y cristianos, rice and black beans cooked together, or congrí; fried plantain, both savoury tostones and sweet maduros; and picadillo, seasoned minced meat. Strong, sweet coffee, cafecito, punctuates the day, and rum from Cuba's sugar cane goes into the mojitos served in the town's bars. Tobacco is the valley's other harvest, and many visitors leave with the memory of a farm visit among the drying leaves.