Cuba - Lonely Planet [173]
Sleeping & Eating
Several signposted houses on the road from Candelaria to Soroa, 3km below the Hotel & Villas Soroa, rent rooms.
Maité Delgado ( 522-70069; Carretera a Soroa Km 7; r CUC$20; ) This accommodation is within easy walking distance of all the Soroa sights and the family is pleasant. If it’s full, the owners will point you in the direction of a few others further down the road.
Hotel & Villas Soroa (Cubanacán; 52-35-34; s/d inc breakfast CUC$56/70; ) Nestled in a narrow valley amid stately trees and verdant hills, you can’t knock the setting of this place. But, if you’ve just drifted over from eco-friendly La Moka (Click here) you might wonder what the architect was thinking when he juxtaposed these scattered blocklike cabins against such a breathtaking natural backdrop. Isolated and tranquil, there are 80 rooms on this spacious complex, along with an inviting pool, small shop and an OK restaurant. And with the forest just shouting distance from your front door, you’re never far from an easy escape route.
Restaurante El Salto ( 9am-9pm) This simple place next to the Baños Romanos is your only eating option outside the Hotel.
Getting There & Away
The Havana–Viñales Víazul bus stops in Las Terrazas, but not Soroa; you can cover the last 16km in a taxi for approximately CUC$8.
A daily transfer bus connects Soroa with Viñales (CUC$12) and Havana (CUC$10). Inquire about times (which can be sporadic) at Hotel & Villas Soroa, or at Havanatur in Viñales Click here and Havana.
The only other access to Soroa and the surrounding area is with your own wheels: car, bicycle or moped. The Servi-Cupet gas station is on the Autopista at the turn-off to Candelaria, 8km below Villas Soroa.
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LAS TERRAZAS
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The pioneering eco-village of Las Terrazas in eastern Pinar del Río abutting the border of Havana province dates back to a reforestation project in 1968 (see boxed text, opposite). Today it’s a Unesco Biosphere Reserve, burgeoning activity center (with Cuba’s only canopy tour) and site of the earliest surviving coffee plantations in Cuba. Not surprisingly, it attracts day-trippers from Havana by the busload.
Overnighters can stay in the community’s sole hotel, the mold-breaking La Moka, an upmarket eco-resort built between 1992 and 1994 by workers drawn from Las Terrazas to attract foreign tourists. Close by, in the picturesque whitewashed village that overlooks a small lake, there’s a vibrant art community with open studios, woodwork and pottery workshops. But the region’s biggest attraction is its verdant natural surroundings; ideal for hiking, relaxing and bird-watching.
Las Terrazas is 20km northeast of Hotel & Villas Soroa and 13km west of the Havana–Pinar del Río Autopista at Cayajabos. There are toll gates at both entrances to the reserve (CUC$3 per person). The Centro de Investigaciones Ecológicas ( 77-29-21) is close to the eastern entrance of the reserve, while the best place to get information is at the Oficinas del Complejo ( 57-85-55), adjacent to Rancho Curujey, or the Hotel Moka, both of which act as nexus points for the reserve.
Sights
The Las Terrazas area supported 54 coffee estates at the height of the Cuban coffee boom in the 1820s and ’30s. Today, coffee is barely grown at all, but you can discover the jungle-immersed ruins of at least half a dozen old cafetales (coffee farms) in the area.
About 1.5km up the hill from the gate on the Cayajabos side and accessible by road, are the restored ruins of the Cafetal Buenavista, Cuba’s oldest coffee plantation built in 1801 by French refugees from Haiti. The huge tajona (grindstone) out the back once extracted the coffee beans from their shells. Next the beans were sun-dried on huge platforms. Ruins of the quarters of some of the 126 slaves held here can be seen alongside the driers. The attic of the master’s house (now a restaurant) was used to store the beans until they could be carried down to the