Cuba - Lonely Planet [359]
Sleeping & Eating
Campismo Yacabo (s/d CUC$7.5/11) This place, by the highway 10km west of Imías, has 18 well-maintained cabins overlooking the sea near the mouth of the river. The cabins sleep four to six people and make a great beach getaway for groups on a budget. It’s supposed to accept foreigners, but check ahead.
Cabañas Playa Imías (1-2 people CUC$10; ) This place, 2km east of Imías midway between Guantánamo and Baracoa, is near a long dark beach that drops off quickly into deep water. The 15 cement cabins have baths, fridges and TVs. It doesn’t guarantee foreign admission but, as ever in Cuba, the rules are flexible.
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PUNTA DE MAISÍ
From Cajobabo, the coastal road continues 51km northeast to La Máquina. As far as Jauco, the road is good; thereafter it’s not so good. Coming from Baracoa to La Máquina (55km), it’s a good road as far as Sabana, then rough in places from Sabana to La Máquina. Either way, La Máquina is the starting point of the very rough 13km track down to Punta de Maisí; it’s best covered in a 4WD.
This is Cuba’s easternmost point and there’s a lighthouse (1862) and a small fine white-sand beach. You can see Haiti 70km away on a clear day.
At the time of writing the Maisí area was designated a military zone and not open to travelers.
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BOCA DE YUMURÍ
Five kilometers south of Baracoa a road branches left off La Farola and travels 28km along the coast to Boca de Yumurí at the mouth of Río Yumurí. Near the bridge over the river is the Túnel de los Alemanes (German Tunnel), an amazing natural arch of trees and foliage. Though lovely, the dark sand beach here has become the day trip from Baracoa. Hustlers hard-sell fried fish meals, while other people peddle colorful land snails called polymitas. They have become rare as a result of being harvested wholesale for tourists, so refuse all offers. From the end of the beach a boat taxi (CUC$2) heads upstream to where the steep river banks narrow into a haunting natural gorge.
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GITMO – A SHORT HISTORY
If the early Spanish settlers could have chosen one piece of their fledgling colony to give away, chances are it would have been Guantánamo Bay, or Gitmo, as generations of homesick US Marines have unsentimentally dubbed it. Insufferably hot, mosquito-ridden and covered in a carpet of prickly bushes, this 116-sq-km nodule of land that hangs like an awkward aberration off Cuba’s southeastern shoreline is a long way from Varadero-style paradise, as early settlers quickly discovered.
Columbus was the first arrival, dropping anchor at Fisherman’s Point in 1494 when he shared a brief seafood barbecue with the indigenous Taíno. The British followed in 1741, during the long-winded War of Jenkin’s Ear, but quickly withdrew after a deadly outbreak of yellow fever.
Procured via the infamous Platt Amendment in 1903 – ostensibly to protect Cuban independence in the aftermath of the Spanish-Cuban-American War – the US’ initial reason for annexing Guantánamo was primarily to protect the eastern approach to the strategically important Panama Canal. In 1934 an upgrade of the original treaty reaffirmed the lease terms and agreed to honor them indefinitely unless both governments accorded otherwise. It also set an annual rent of approximately US$4000, a sum that the US generously continues to cough up but which the Cubans defiantly won’t bank on the grounds that the occupation is illegal (Castro allegedly stored the checks in the top drawer of his office desk). Until 1958, when motorized traffic was officially cut off between Guantánamo and the outside world, hundreds of Cubans used to travel daily into the base for work, and there were still a handful of workers