In the mountains north of Guantánamo, at the eastern end of Cuba, the Sierra del Purial and the hills around the town of El Salvador rise steeply from the dry coastal plain into a greener, cooler world of forest and coffee. At the end of the eighteenth century, French planters fleeing the slave revolution in Saint-Domingue, today's Haiti, settled in these mountains and built coffee plantations, with stone drying terraces, mills, aqueducts and grand houses, worked by enslaved Africans. The ruins of more than a hundred and seventy of these plantations survive in the Sierra Maestra and around Guantánamo, and they were listed by UNESCO in 2000 as the Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the South-East of Cuba.
Many of the plantations are now overgrown, their stone walls and terraces swallowed by the forest, but walking among them you can still see the scale of the enterprise and the cleverness of the engineering, with water channels and drying floors carved into the slopes. The region's history is complex and painful, marked by slavery, revolution and the long presence of the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, which you may see from a distance. To the east, the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park protects one of the richest rainforests in the Caribbean, with many endemic species.
Riding in eastern Cuba is an adventure. Roads range from decent tarmac to potholed tracks, with horse-drawn carts, bicycles, trucks and pedestrians all sharing the space. Signage is limited, and night riding is risky due to poor lighting and unexpected obstacles. The road to Baracoa over the mountains, La Farola, is one of the most famous in Cuba, with hairpins, viewpoints and roadside stalls selling cucurucho, a sweet made of coconut wrapped in a palm leaf cone.
Fuel can be hard to find in Cuba, with frequent shortages, so fill up whenever possible in larger towns like Guantánamo and carry extra if you can. Food in the countryside is simple: rice and beans, pork, plantains and fresh fruit. Bring water, sun protection and patience, and be prepared for heat and sudden tropical storms, especially from June to November.