Thursday 14th April, Havana, Cuba

Today Peter and I have been split up! I'm on the tour to Vinales Valley and Peter will be doing a Panoramic tour of Havana. We've never been in this situation before, and it feels a bit odd. But I'm looking forward to my tour, and Peter wants to look around the town, so it's worked out quite well.

The highlight of my tour was to be a boat trip through some caves in Vinales Valley and a buffet lunch because the caves were some 3 hours away from the port by bus. Our guide was a young man called Johnny, and I'm told there were 27 passengers, but every time I counted them, I got a different number. I give up in the end and asked Johnny to do the counting from now on. (I blame the bus and little people hiding behind tall seats).

So off we went - I tried to get some photo's of how people lived outside Havana. Most of them are farmers I understand.

Then we got to Vinales Valley, where the scenery was quite stunning. All of us wished the bus would stop and we could take a few photographs of the amazing hills that we saw around us.

Eventually we got to the caves, and we all bailed out of the bus and trooped across to the entrance only to be brought to an abrupt halt. The queue to get in was over an hour so we decided that we should go for lunch. Lunch took a while to arrive but we were entertained by a very loud group playing traditional music with the bonus of some interesting dance moves. I really enjoyed it.

One of the reasons our lunch took so long was that a couple of hundred students had arrived and were being served before us. Later, as we'd just finished the main course and were waiting for dessert and coffee, we realised that the students were heading to the cave after lunch too. Our group decided to miss our pudding and get in before the young 'uns, but too late, they all got up and left before we were organised. And that was it, it was going to take far too long for us to get in after them. With well over an hour's queue likely, we went to plan B.

Plan B involved 30 minutes downtown in the village.

And a visit to a tobacco farm drying house. That was a bit of a highlight as far as I was concerned.

A view of the hills from the Tobacco Farm - they were quite fantastic. 

Then we got to see a painting on a cliff. For some reason the Cubans are quite proud of it - it's not my thing at all.

And finally, at last, we got a panoramic stop.

Then it was another long sleepy drive of 2 and 1/2 hours back. A good day in the end. Now we have a couple of sea days before our next port. That means lie ins, because Peter's classes aren't until the afternoon. Class!