Havana to Vinales

So Ive forgotten the date etc, but we had a last night in Havana (returning later) visiting a chocolate factory, where they make the stuff and pour it into animal shaped moulds. (Being a south american native product chocolate making and shops are everywhere.) Then you buy it by naming the animal (they are all different weights). The smell was mesmerising so we sat in their cafe and ordered a hot and a cold fresh chocolate drink. Rich plus. Popping with caffeine and endorphines we headed further into town for another lobster dinner. Cost for a salad, main dish, a drink (Daccary sp?)and coffee $16 CUC about the same in NZD. So far so good for the guts although I thought everything from my brains down might go south last night, but they didnt.
A 4 hour trip today west of Hasvana has us in Vinales, a town in the Valle de Vinales. Im going to try and drop a photo into Flickr and test the data transfer speed - it is glorious. WE drove here through flat, and frankly aweful country where the forest has obviously been cleared and has revegetated in dense rubbishy weeds. Here and there an area hacjked back and some scrawny cattle, but the soils are poor and it was fiarly bleak although at least the rubbish diminished as we left the city behind. The inner city is clean but the outskirts are getting towards slums.
Late in the drive we veered north towards hills, wound up through them (we are travellingt by local bus) then dropped over into this valley. It is dotted with rounded limestone mounds, with bright red plots of bullock ploughed ground where local famers grow some of Cubas best cigar tobacco. Our hotel looks down on the valley with the township of Vinales also below us - apparently a very well preserved spanish colonial rural village which we get to see tomorrow. We have just come back for a walk down sideroads - tobacco plots and tall barns with thatched roofs, where the leaves are hung to start drying then packed in bales to cure and age. Oxen (with saddles for riding), some horse and carts but no mechanisation except for vehicles on the road. Hence the havgana cigar claim of 'totalment a mano' (mispelt) meaning only by hand, from beginningt to end. Signing off early to see if I can load a view from our room. There is a breeze so we think we can leave our balcony open and sleep to the sounds on the night. Sx
ps back again because its nope to flickr downloads there is inadequate capability to browse my photos. Costa Rica in a week might be possible I will get a group of pics compressed and into a file in camera memory, for easier down load. Its a lovely evening, probably only 30 deg but the humidity near or at 100% which makes it hot. We are sweatheaps but getting more used to it. Most of our clothes will rot at this pace they simply dont dry properly, only losing the water that drips out. sx