In the hills of southeastern Cuba, between Santiago and Guantánamo, the ruins of old coffee plantations lie hidden in the forest, and they tell a remarkable story. After the slave revolution in Saint-Domingue in the 1790s, which led to the independence of Haiti, many French planters fled to Cuba with their enslaved workers, and they introduced coffee growing on a large scale in the Sierra Maestra foothills. In the nineteenth century, hundreds of cafetales were established, with mansions, drying platforms, mills, aqueducts and slave quarters, using innovative techniques adapted to the steep mountain terrain. The Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the South-East of Cuba was listed by UNESCO in 2000.
The plantations are a reminder of the wealth created by coffee and of the brutal system of slavery that sustained it.
The landscape is green and mountainous, with tropical forests, coffee bushes in the shade of larger trees, and small villages. The roads in this region are often narrow, steep and in poor condition, with potholes and sometimes unpaved sections, and the climate is hot and humid, with heavy rain in the wet season. The road to the Gran Piedra, from the coast east of Santiago, climbs steeply through the forest with many bends, and the views from the top are spectacular when the clouds lift.
Independent motorcycle travel in Cuba is complicated. Bringing your own bike is difficult, rentals are limited, and fuel shortages have been a serious problem in recent years, with long queues and stations running dry, so plan for uncertainty and carry extra fuel if you can. Guantánamo, about twenty-three kilometres away, and Santiago de Cuba have the most services. Local food includes congrí, rice and black beans cooked together, roast pork, and of course strong Cuban coffee, which you can sometimes buy directly from farmers in the mountains. The people are warm and resourceful, and the music of the region, son, was born in these eastern provinces.