Parque National Viñales looks picture perfect, photos seem almost fake in their beauty, as if they have been painted to create a Chinese watercolor.

The tiny village of Viñales attracts bus-loads of tourists yet manages to avoid the frenzied tourist circus of other popular locales. The valley itself is embellished by soaring pine trees and scattered with bulbous limestone cliffs (mogotes) that teeter like giant haystacks having seemingly been dropped in from outer space above the picturesque valley.

This is somewhere to rent a horse or a bike or indeed simply to put on your walking shoes and get into the beautiful rural countryside of the valley. They are plenty of destinations and attractions (Mural de la Prehistoria and Cueva del Indio are favorites), but the real draw is simply breathing the crisp air and seeing local life whether at a cockfight, kids playing in the village or wizened locals tending their tobacco.

This is somewhere to rent a horse or a bike or indeed simply to put on your walking shoes and get into the beautiful rural countryside of the valley. They are plenty of destinations and attractions (Mural de la Prehistoria and Cueva del Indio are favorites), but the real draw is simply breathing the crisp air and seeing local life whether at a cockfight, kids playing in the village or wizened locals tending their tobacco.

This is somewhere to rent a horse or a bike or indeed simply to put on your walking shoes and get into the beautiful rural countryside of the valley. They are plenty of destinations and attractions (Mural de la Prehistoria and Cueva del Indio are favorites), but the real draw is simply breathing the crisp air and seeing local life whether at a cockfight, kids playing in the village or wizened locals tending their tobacco.