Pinar del Río Travel Guide

Vinales Valley lies in Pinar del Rio province in western Cuba, a karst landscape where rounded limestone mogotes, red fertile soil and tobacco fields intertwine. Enormous dome-shaped outliers rise from the ground, cloaked in green, while neatly tended tobacco, corn and thatched farmhouses below form an almost motionless pastoral picture. The area has been inhabited since prehistory and, after the colonial era, became Cuba's most celebrated tobacco-growing region, still using traditional open-air curing to make top-grade cigars. In 1999 UNESCO listed Vinales Valley as a World Heritage Site for its exceptional agricultural landscape and geology. Visitors can step into family-run tobacco farms to touch the curing barns and learn rolling techniques; paddle through the underground river of Cueva del Indio; climb a viewpoint over the whole mogote range; or stand before the Mural de la Prehistoria painted on a cliff. Mist often wraps the valley at dawn, and farmers drive cattle home at dusk, making Vinales a flagship of Cuba's slow rural life.