Vinales – 
Our day starts with a good breakfast in our Casa – omelette, chorizo, toast and a huge amount of fruits*. Delicious. We can hear some music coming from the direction of the main street… Today is the first May – Labor Day! This is also a holiday here of course . We hurry up and run down the terrace to the main street. A parade is heading our way with some local salsa school pupils performing on the street and stilt walkers walking in between them. There are also some pupils holding up self-made banners. If some (somewhat casual, but still uniformed) military would not have been here, this would look like a casual village procession. Stoping at the market place there is also some politics are getting mixed in to this: Alternating to pupils reciting poems and some bands playing music (a lot of songs are about Cuba’s popular hero Che by the way ), some speeches are also held by some politicians (or the mayor? Citizen council?). I think we are the only foreigners here – probably the only ones who got up this early (7:00!).
We don’t stay there very long, after about an hour we decide to rent a scooter and head north of Vinales. Aleida said that you could rent scooters and bicycles behind the “Casa Don Thomas” restaurant. Unfortunately, the shop is closed due to the holiday. Crap, we didn’t expect that. Alternatively, we consider to go to the Tourist Info, opposite the market square. Again, no luck though. The office is open, yet all available scooters are already rented for 24 hours and have not been brought back yet. The hop-on-hop-off buses do not seem to run today either. I wonder if the caves we wanted to visit are also closed today? It wouldn’t be worthwhile to rent a scooter then. The man in the office reassures us though that the main attractions here are also open on Sundays and on holidays . We could simply wait in the office or on the terrace in front – shouldn’t take too long for the scooters to be returned. I decide to get to the nearby supermarket to get some water and some snacks… And maybe… yes, ice-cream sounds like good idea right now. Frank is also quite happy as I return with something refreshing.
