Cuba - Lonely Planet [353]
Ask ahead if you would like an English-speaking guide (park officials claim they now have at least one). Also ask about food provision at Pico Cuba. Drinks are available for purchase at the trailhead in Las Cuevas. Tipping the guides is mandatory – CUC$3 to CUC$5 is sufficient. For competitive types, the (unofficial) summit record by a guide is two hours, 45 minutes. So if you’re feeling energetic…
Sleeping & Eating
Campismo La Mula (Cubamar; s/d low season CUC$7/10, high season CUC$11/16) On a remote pebble beach at the mouth of Río La Mula, 12km east of the Pico Turquino trailhead, La Mula has 50 small cabins popular with holidaying Cubans, hikers destined for Turquino and the odd hitchhiking south-coast adventurer short on lifts. It’s pretty much the only option on this isolated stretch of coast. It’s wise to check with Cubamar or the Oficina Reservaciones de Campismo (Click here) in Santiago de Cuba before pitching up. If it’s full, you may be able to pitch a tent.
There’s also a rustic cafe and restaurant on-site.
Getting There & Away
Private trucks and the odd rickety bus connect La Mula to Chivirico, but they are sporadic and don’t run on any fixed schedules. A taxi from Santiago should cost CUC$50 to CUC$60. Traffic is almost nonexistent in this neck of the woods and even the amarillos are sparse.
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Guantánamo Province
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GUANTÁNAMO
AROUND GUANTÁNAMO US NAVAL BASE
ZOOLÓGICO DE PIEDRAS
SOUTH COAST
PUNTA DE MAISÍ
BOCA DE YUMURÍ
BARACOA
NORTHWEST OF BARACOA
PARQUE NACIONAL ALEJANDRO DE HUMBOLDT
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Say you’re from Guantánamo to anyone outside Cuba, and they’ll probably assume that you’re either a US Navy Seal on annual leave, or an ex-inmate from one of the world’s most notorious jails. But Cuba’s wettest, driest, hottest, oldest and most mountainous province is far more than an anachronistic US naval base. Cuba in the modern sense started here in August 1511, when Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar and his band of 400 colonizers landed uninvited on the rain-lashed eastern coastline. Making camp near a mysterious flat-topped mountain known to the natives as El Yunque, they christened their new settlement Villa de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Baracoa and quickly made enemies with the local Taínos.
Baracoa lives on, of course; no longer the island’s capital, but still one of its most beguiling settlements, cut off for centuries by the shadowy Sierra del Puril – Cuba’s Himalayas – and beautifully unique as a consequence.
To get there you’ll need to take La Farola, the province’s rugged transport artery and one of the seven engineering marvels of modern Cuba, a weaving roller coaster that travels from the dry cacti-littered southern coast up into the humid Cuchillas de Toa mountains. Overlaid by the fecund Parque Nacional Alejandro de Humboldt (a Unesco World Heritage Site), this heavily protected zone is considered to be one of the last few swathes of virgin rainforest left in the Caribbean and guards an incredible array of endemic species.
Closer to sea level, Cuba’s eastern extremity is scattered with myriad archaeological sites that exhibit important vestiges of the island’s pre-Columbian cultural jigsaw. Separated from the country’s cosmopolitan urban centers, the native bloodlines are purer here and, around the isolated Boca de Yumurí, you’ll find people who still claim indigenous Indian ancestry.
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HIGHLIGHTS
River Journey Take a boat ride on the wondrous Río Yumurí
Coffee, Coconuts and Cacao Sample the culinary secrets of oceanside Baracoa
Roller-coaster Ride Up and over La Farola (see boxed text,), take the high road to Baracoa on a bicycle
Surreal Stones Get an eyefull of the stony statues