Pinar del Río and the Western Hills, Cuba

2023 Introduction

Dear Readers, I hope you all have a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2023. For new readers, welcome and please come back regularly. 

Over the next few months, I want to review some of the photographs in my archives. Later in the year you will see Houston, Wales, Greece, more Mississippi, Romania, and various other places. I have so many negatives in boxes, I will never finish scanning them. And I get enthusiastic when I see new interesting decay and take new pictures (mostly using film now). Then I get even further behind on looking over old negatives.

I started this blog in 2010, with no particular plan or ending date.

Some statistics:

• Total articles: 688
• Total views (some of which are repeat readers): 1,058,500
• Most popular articles:
• Abandoned Rocket Fuel Plant, Redlands, California
• Industrial Architecture, North Conway, New Hampshire
• Mississippi River Floods
• Abandoned Utica High School

Note that I do not have any commercial advertising here or any of the links where you click to buy some product and I get a minor payoff. I consider pop-ups and advertising cheesy, irritating, and an insult to my readers. 

Cuba

Let us return to the archives with Cuba, as good a place as any to start. My wife and I toured western Cuba in early 2017. Type "Cuba" in the search box to see older articles. 

Pinar del Río is a charming provincial capitol of Pinar del Río Province, the westernmost province in Cuba. The architecture jumps out at you with the brilliant colors and ornate neoclassical architectural details. I'd love to spend a month in these smaller towns exploring and photographing. 

Room with a view

After looking around Pinar del Río, we headed into the hills to the west for an all-to-short overnight at a spectacular biosphere reserve. 

Room with a view, Las Terrazas, Vinales

Las Terrazas

Las Terrazas is situated in the limestone hills of Vinales. It's a charming setting. We saw Belted Kingfishers on trees around the lake. Part of the region is a UNESCO biosphere reserve.

Las Terrazas es una pequeña comunidad turística rural de desarrollo sostenible que te ofrece un entorno único en el conectar con la naturaleza. Situada a 75 kilómetros al oeste de La Habana, este lugar forma parte de la Sierra del Rosario, catalogada por la UNESCO como Reserva de la Biosfera en 1985.

These photographs are from a January 2017 trip to Cuba. We all had a wonderful time and everyone we met was friendly and welcoming. The Covid shut-down must have been devastating to Cuba's tourist industry, coupled with churlish restrictions on American visits that the Trump administration imposed. Regardless, as travel opens up, go visit Cuba! Go before the developers ruin it. It is a photographic paradise.

Type "Cuba"or "Havana" in the search box to see other articles on Cuba.