Cuba - Lonely Planet [152]
Getting There & Away
Several charter flights arrive directly from Canada weekly, and Cubana has weekly flights from Montreal and Milan.
For pop-by visitors, daily flights from Havana to Cayo Largo del Sur with Cubana cost CUC$80/145 for a one-way/return trip. The island makes a viable day trip from Havana, although you’ll have to get up early for the airport transfer (all Cayo Largo flights depart from the airport at Playa Baracoa a few miles west of Marina Hemingway). Another option is to take an organized day trip from Havana or Varadero to Cayo Largo del Sur for in the vicinity of CUC$137, including airport transfers, return flights, lunch, plus trips to Playa Sirena and Cayo Iguana. All the Havana agencies offer this (Click here).
Getting Around
Measuring 37 sq km, getting around Cayo Largo shouldn’t present too many challenges. A taxi or transfer bus can transport you the 5km from the airport to the hotel strip. From here a slightly ridiculous mini bus-train (the trencito) carts tourists out to the idyllic beaches of Playa Paraíso and Sirena (6km/7km away). The train returns in the afternoon, or you can hike back along the beach (see boxed text, left). The tiny settlement of Combinado with its marina and motley attractions is 1km north of the airport and 6km from the nearest resort. For taxis phone Taxi OK ( 24-82-45) or hang around outside the hotels/airport.
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Pinar del Río Province
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PINAR DEL RÍO AREA
PINAR DEL RÍO
SOUTHWEST OF PINAR DEL RÍO
PENÍNSULA DE GUANAHACABIBES
PARQUE NACIONAL PENÍNSULA DE GUANAHACABIBES
VALLE DE VIÑALES
VIÑALES
PARQUE NACIONAL VIÑALES
WEST OF VIÑALES
CAYO JUTÍAS
NORTHERN PINAR DEL RÍO
PUERTO ESPERANZA
CAYO LEVISA
BAHÍA HONDA & AROUND
SAN DIEGO DE LOS BAÑOS & AROUND
SOROA
LAS TERRAZAS
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Verde, que te quiero verde (green, how I love you green), wrote Lorca in one of his most immortal lines. It’s a stanza that springs to mind regularly as you track west through verdant Pinar del Río province where an all-pervading emerald sheen seems to envelop everything you see.
Known popularly as the ‘garden of Cuba’ for its distinct agricultural heritage, bucolic Pinar protects more land than any other province with two Unesco Biosphere Reserves (the Sierra del Rosario and the Península de Guanahacabibes), a Unesco World Heritage Site (the Valle de Viñales) and a patchwork of carefully managed flora and fauna zones. Long celebrated for the fertility of its rust red soil, this is the best place in the world to grow tobacco, a blessing that has created one of Cuba’s most quintessential landscapes, a colorful cornucopia of oxen-furrowed fields and rustic tobacco-drying houses that is guarded jealously by an omnipresent army of sombrero-wearing guajiros.
One of Cuba’s classic regional stereotypes, the guajiro is Pinar del Río personified, an amiable rural hick with a level of generosity that verges on the gullible. Venerable Viñales is the guajiro’s spiritual home, a serene settlement ringed by craggy mogotes (flat-topped hills) which, despite its popularity on the tourist circuit, remains one of Cuba’s most friendly and hassle-free towns.
Beyond the countryside, Pinar’s beaches are renowned for their quality rather than quantity. Cayo Jutías and Cayo Levisa stand out as highlights, two sandy carpets on the north coast that enjoy minuscule foot traffic compared with the big resorts further east. In-the-know divers head west to Playa María la Gorda on the island’s remote tip, while eco-warriors hone in on salubrious Las Terrazas, a groundbreaking ‘model village’ that took root when environmentalism was still a hobby for hippies.
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HIGHLIGHTS
Hike or Bike Get out of the tour bus and see, smell and taste the agricultural beauty of Valle de Viñales Click here
Underwater Odyssey Experience scuba diving at translucent Playa María la Gorda
Beach Retreat Recharge your batteries on dreamy Cayo Jutías
Cold War Hideaway See where Che Guevara played chess during the Cuban Missile Crisis