Mural de la Prehistoria, a Wall Mural on a Cuban Mountain

The Valle de Vinales region is dotted with mogotes

After the tobacco farm visit, the tour bus took us to see a mural painted on a side of a mountain in Valle de Vinales.

Valle de Vinales is known for its beautiful karst landscape dotted with mogotes - a series of doom shape mountains as high as 300 meters rising abruptly out of flat plains.

Mogotes are series of dome shaped mountains rising out of flat plains

Since this region was declared as an UNESCO site in 1999, tourists have been flocking to the area.

The inhabitants in this area is around seven thousand people. However, each day, there are around three thousand tourists coming to visit this region!

There used to be seven restaurants here a few years ago. Currently this number has increased to seventy.

The Vinales Valley has the perfect soil for growing tobacco 

The tobacco farm located in the Vinales Valley is a region with fertile soil perfect for the growing of tobacco









During the early 1959, Dr. Jimenez told Fidel Castro about his visits to these mountains and how he had found fossils of fish, skulls of saurians and evidence of aboriginal settlements in these caves.

Valle de Vinales is known for its beautiful mogotes. 

This talk led to the idea of painting a wall mural on this mogote. Hence, the Mural de la Prehistoria was born.



They cleaned the mountain and painting began in 1960. It lasted for four years.















This mural represents the life of the first inhabitants of the Cuban archipelago.







The Mural de la Prehistoria measures 80 meters in height and 120 meters in length and it is one of the largest wall murals in the world.

Mural de la Prehistoria, Pinar del Rio, Cuba

This region has been declared as a UNESCO heritage site

It depicts the evolution from the primitive trilobite to dinosaurs and to human beings.

Afterwards, we arrived at a scenic
lookout point where we took photos of the impressive mountain range,

We saw a beautiful resort hotel there and I bought a Cuban hat at one of the outside stalls.

It was a full day for us and we saw a lot! Our tour bus made its way back to Havana and the traffic was congested!

 I am sure the traffic has increased a lot recently due to the rise in the number of tourists visiting Cuba. We were the last two tourists being dropped off and we arrived at our resort at 5 minutes before 9 pm, just in time to make it for our dinner!

A great excursion indeed!

R.T.

Having a fantastic time!
Valle de Vinales
Cuba
Week of Jan. 9, 2017