Rex Beach, the novelist, writer and traveler, looked down from his auto into the valley for the first time in 1916. Stopping the machine suddenly, he jumped to the ground and stood spellbound, looking down into that beautiful basin, over a thousand feet below. After a moment’s pause he exclaimed: “I have visited every spot of interest from northern Alaska to Panama, and traveled through many countries, but never before in my life have I met anything so picturesquely, dramatically beautiful as this valley, this dream garden that lies at our feet. There is nothing like it in the Western Hemisphere, probably not in all the world.” The length of the basin is not over twenty miles while its width varies from three to ten. The floor is level, covered with rich waving grass, watered by a little stream, that comes meandering through the valley, dives beneath a mountain range, afterwards to reappear from a grotto-like opening on the northern side, beyond the valley, whence its waters eventually find their home in the Gulf of Mexico. The peculiar, almost unreal, indentations of the northern ridge are silhouetted so vividly against the sky above that from the southern shore of the valley one is inclined at times to believe them fantastically formed clouds. The remarkable feature, however, of Vinales lies in the peculiar round-topped mountains that rise abruptly from the level surface below, and project themselves perpendicularly into the air, to a height varying from 1,200 to 2,000 feet. Unique imposing formations, resulting from millions of years of tropical rains and rock erosion, are covered with dense forests of strange palms and thousands of rare plants, whose varied foliage seems to be peculiar to this isolated spot in the western central part of Pinar del Rio. These singular dome-like lomas of Vinales, looming up so unexpectedly from the valley below, are usually accessible from one side, although but very few people seem to have taken the trouble to climb to their summits. All of these mountains and foothills, composed of limestone formations, are honeycombed with caves, some of them of rare beauty.