Cuba - Lonely Planet [286]
Further south the hills become craggier before giving way to the purple-hued Sierra del Cristal, a fresh-scented alpine-flavored wilderness where an adventure-seeking Castro roamed as a child. Pine-clad and bursting with wild orchids, the area around the Parque Nacional La Mensura guards a mountain research center and the island’s highest waterfall.
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HIGHLIGHTS
View from the Cross See Holguín spread out like a map beneath you from the Loma de la Cruz Click here
Columbus Rediscovery Get an eyeful of where Columbus first landed in the Parque Nacional Monumento Bariay
Taíno Artifacts Visit one of Cuba’s most important archaeological sites at Museo Chorro de Maita
Casa del Comandante Take a peep behind the mask at Fidel’s childhood home, the Finca Las Manacas
Film Festival Go to Gibara in April for the cutting-edge Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre (see boxed text,)
TELEPHONE CODE: 024
POPULATION: 1.04 MILLION
AREA: 9300 SQ KM
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History
Most historians and experts agree that Christopher Columbus first made landfall in Cuba on October 28, 1492 at Cayo Bariay near Playa Blanca, just west of Playa Don Lino (now in Holguín province). The gold-seeking Spaniards were welcomed ashore by Seboruco Indians and they captured 13 of them to take back to Europe as scientific ‘specimens.’ Boycotting Bariay in favor of Guantánamo 20 years later when they set up their new colonial capital in Baracoa, Spanish explorer Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar gifted the hilly terrain north of Bayamo to Captain García Holguín, a Mexican conquistador. The province became an important sugar-growing area at the end of the 19th century when much of the land was bought up and cleared of forest by the US-owned United Fruit Company. Formerly part of the Oriente territory, Holguín became a province in its own right in 1975.
Parks & Reserves
Holguín’s mountainous southern region is protected in the Sierra Cristal and La Mensura National Parks. Rocazul is a small bio-park near Playa Pesquero.
Getting There & Around
The city of Holguín is well served by Víazul buses, trucks and slower trains heading to Havana, Santiago and all the main cities in between. Gibara and Banes can be reached by less comfortable local buses or trucks. Guardalavaca has a handy hop-on/hop-off tourist bus linking the sights along the coast. The east of the province is off the main transport grid and getting around here without a car or bike is both slow and uncomfortable.
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HOLGUÍN
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Although it can’t claim a World Heritage Site listing or compete with the likes of Havana and Santiago for culture and music, the city of San Isidoro de Holguín has an imperceptible Cuban energy. Things just sort of happen here – a spontaneous shindig in the main square, a solemn religious procession to the Calvary-like Loma de la Cruz, a surprise victory in the National Baseball Series.
Known euphemistically as ‘the city of parks,’ Cuba’s fourth-largest urban center retains a laid-back and friendly atmosphere that puts visitors instantly at ease. You won’t see too many of your fellow tourists here, but you probably won’t miss them either. There’s too much reality to witness, too many rhythms to absorb. Flop down in a cafe on Parque Calixto García and soak up the sights and sounds of a city of stalwart survivors going industriously about their daily business.
History
In 1515 Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, Cuba’s first governor, conferred the lands north of Bayamo to Captain García Holguín, an officer in the Spanish army and one of island’s original colonizers. Setting up a cattle ranch in the province’s verdant and fertile hinterland, Holguín and his descendants presided over a burgeoning agricultural settlement that by 1720 had sprouted a small wooden church and more than 450 inhabitants. In 1752 San Isidoro de Holguín (the