Cuba - Lonely Planet [207]
* * *
HIGHLIGHTS
Graveyard Fascination View the classical finery in Cienfuegos’ two monumental cemeteries Click here
Benny in Lajas Track the legend of Benny Moré in Santa Isabel de las Lajas
Punta Life Stay in an amazing casa particular in Cienfuegos’ classic Punta Gorda neighborhood Click here
Cooling Down Hike to bracing El Nicho and cool down in an invigorating waterfall
Beach Break Stay in a cool hotel next to the beach in Rancho Luna
TELEPHONE CODE: 043
POPULATION: 398,569
AREA: 4180 SQ KM
* * *
History
The first settlers in the Cienfuegos area were Taíno Indians who called their fledgling principality, Cacicazgo de Jagua – a native word for ‘beauty.’ In 1494 Columbus ‘discovered’ the Bahía de Cienfuegos (Cuba’s third-largest bay, with a surface area of 88 sq km) on his second voyage to the New World and 14 years later Sebastián de Ocampo passed by during his pioneering circumnavigation of the island. With the onset of the era of piracy in the 16th and 17th centuries the Spanish built a bayside fort, the imposing Castillo de Jagua, one of the most important military structures on Cuba’s south coast.
Parks & Reserves
Parque El Nicho in the Escambray Mountains is managed by the state tourist company Gaviota as an outpost of the Topes de Collantes Natural Park in adjacent Sancti Spíritus province.
Getting There & Around
The city of Cienfuegos is linked to Trinidad and Havana by twice-daily Víazul buses. The train service out of the city is less reliable with sporadic services to Santa Clara and Havana. The province’s smaller towns can be reached via truck, local buses or your own wheels. For shorter distances, consider a taxi.
Return to beginning of chapter
CIENFUEGOS
pop 139,137
La ciudad que más me gusta a mí (the city I like the best), reads a billboard on the Bahía de Cienfuegos quoting the words of native singer Benny Moré. He wasn’t the settlement’s only cheerleader. Refined, elegant, genteel and hassle-free, Cuba’s so-called Perla del Sur (Pearl of the South) has long seduced travelers from around the island with its enlightened French spirit and feisty Caribbean panache. If Cuba has a Paris this is most definitely it.
Arranged around a calm natural bay, Cienfuegos is a nautical city with a superb waterside setting. Founded in 1819, it’s one of Cuba’s newest settlements, but also one of its most architecturally homogeneous, a factor that earned it a Unesco World Heritage Site listing in 2005. Geographically, the city is split into two distinct parts: the colonnaded central zone with its elegant Prado and salubrious Parque Martí; and Punta Gorda, a thin knife of land that slices into the southern waters of the bay and contains a clutch of eclectic early 20th-century palaces along with some of Cuba’s prettiest casas particulares.
While the city’s 19th-century architecture and tranquil seaside setting help create a pleasant atmosphere, the churn of outlying industry does not. Ringing the Bahía de Cienfuegos is a giant shipyard, the bulk of Cuba’s shrimp fishing fleet, a nitrogen fertilizer factory, a cement works, an oil refinery, a thermoelectric plant and the ghostlike dome of Cuba’s only (unfinished) nuclear power station (the plan was abandoned in the early ’90s when Soviet money dried up). Fortunately for travelers, the pollution has yet to penetrate the city center.
History
Cienfuegos was founded in 1819 by a pioneering French émigré from Louisiana named Don Louis D’Clouet. Sponsoring a scheme to increase the population of whites on the island, D’Clouet invited 40 families from New Orleans and Philadelphia, and Bordeaux in France to establish a fledgling settlement known initially as San Fernandina de Jagua. Setting up tents in what is now Parque Martí, the encampment city got off to a bad start when it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1821. Unperturbed, the French settlers rebuilt their homes and – suspicious, perhaps, that their first name had brought them bad luck – rechristened the