First day off

On my first day off, I thought I would try to do some sightseeing, so Ryan and I decided to try our hand out with the 'yellow jackets' - government workers wearing a yellow vest that essentially stop most traffic heading out of town to allow hitchhikers to ride with them. There is a queue, and he gives you a number that indicates your priority in heading a particular direction. As it turns out we time it quite poorly and end up waiting over 3 hours for a ride. Luckily, we met a nice Spanish woman waiting for the same ride, so we were able to pass the time chatting. Nevertheless, after 3 hours we had had pretty much enough, and Ryan suggested we give it another 15 minutes tops. 14 minutes later a truck came by and we all loaded in! Despite our wait, we had a great ride standing up in the back of the truck with all of the other passengers. The countryside in this area is quite scenic - lush and rural.

The ride itself costs 1 cuban peso (standard) - about 4 cents!

Our destination is a large cave outside of town that is quite well known. We have to walk a little from the sideroad where the truck lets us off, but it is a pleasant walk and not too far. Once we get to the cave area, we decide to avoid the tour groups and guides, and wander up the path to where the cave entrance is (we think). After a 10 minute walk up a trail, we arrive at the opening to the cave, but it is deserted and there is a fence and locked gate barring the entrance. We decide to just climb over the fence and wander in on our own since we have headlamps. Inside there are sections which are quite impressive cavernous sections, but probably not worth the $10 or $15 entrance charge. After about half an hour of exploring we hear voices and figure that we should lay low, but it is too late. The guide sees us and inquires how we got in. He knows we jumped the fence and suggests we simply wanted to avoid paying - which is partially true. We feel a little guilty, and are a bit sheepish about how it looks, but he is fairly cool about it. In the end, Ryan suggests that we make our way out so that he can pretend he never saw us and he agrees. We head out and down to the main information station, where we inquire about getting a guide (since we know that they probably saw us head up the trail, and wanted to make sure we had a story that would both keep us from getting in trouble and prevent the guide we had met from being interrogated about us).

The price for a guided tour is a little steep, and we don't really want to go back so we come up with an excuse and head back. On the way back to the main road, Ryan is feeling hungry so we decide to ask a family with some banana trees outside if we can buy a few bananas. They wander back to the house and come out with a bunch of bananas, not taking any money.

On the way back we get picked up by something that looks like a local van / bus - it is fairly empty, but people seem to use it as local transportation. They drop us off in Vinales and do not take any money (not even a Cuban peso). We are a bit confused about this, but happy to have had the chance to try yet another form of transport.