Pinar del Rio Nature & Adventure

Land and environment

The western end of the island is dominated by one of the island’s three main mountain ranges, the Cordillera de Guaniguanico, which is divided into the Sierra del Rosario in the east (rising to the Pan de Guajaibón, its highest point at 699 m) and the Sierra de los Organos in the west, which form a curious Chinese-looking landscape with steep-sided limestone hills and flat, fertile valleys. A fault line creates a sharp boundary between these mountains and a wide expanse of rolling farmland in the southern part of the province, centred on the pleasant but unspectacular provincial capital of Pinar del Río. The province contains three major nature reserves: a 260-sq-km biosphere reserve in the Sierra del Rosario, a 132-sq-km national monument in the Sierra de los Organos around Viñales, and a 1175-sq-km biosphere reserve in the Guanahacabibes peninsula at the western tip.

Pinar del Río grows about 70% of Cuba’s tobacco crop and almost every agricultural area is dotted with vegas, curious tent-shaped windowless structures made of palm thatch, which are used for drying tobacco leaves, a process that takes at least 45 days (easy to enter and take photographs). The fields are ploughed, mostly with oxen, in September and October. The crop is transplanted into the fields in November, with the leaves picked over the following months. The cigar factory in Pinar del Río has regular tours and in the harvest season it is possible in most villages to visit an escogida de tabaco, where the best leaves are selected for further processing. The flat lands of San Juan y Martínez are where the very best tobacco is grown.