Why this ride
From Guantánamo it runs 383 km to Guantánamo; allow about 8 h 10 of riding. On the way it passes La Gran Piedra, Dos Palmas Contramaestre and back through La Gran Piedra. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
El Salvador and Dos Palmas Contramaestre
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 383 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 8 h 10
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. El Salvador
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.
Read the complete El Salvador write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
El Salvador is where the day begins. Next is La Gran Piedra.
2. La Gran Piedra
La Gran Piedra means simply the Great Stone, and that is exactly what waits at the top: an enormous boulder sitting on the crest of the Sierra de la Gran Piedra, over twelve hundred metres above sea level and roughly twenty kilometres east of Santiago de Cuba. You climb several hundred stone steps from the road to reach it, and a metal ladder takes you onto the rock itself. On a clear morning the view runs over forested ridges to the Caribbean on one side and inland across the Sierra Maestra on the other, and people say that on the clearest nights you can see the lights of Jamaica and Haiti.
Read the complete La Gran Piedra write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
La Gran Piedra comes up about 119 km into the recorded legs. Next is Dos Palmas Contramaestre.
3. Dos Palmas Contramaestre
Eastern Cuba has a very different feel from Havana, and the country between Santiago and Palma Soriano shows why. This is the foothill country of the Sierra Maestra, the mountain range where the revolution began in the 1950s, and the land is a mix of cane fields, mango and royal palm, small farms and steep green ridges to the south. Dos Palmas is the name of a locality here, close to El Cobre, home of the great copper-domed basilica where the Virgin of Charity is venerated, and Palma Soriano, the main town of the valley.
Read the complete Dos Palmas Contramaestre write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 192 km into the recorded legs you reach Dos Palmas Contramaestre. Next is back through La Gran Piedra.
4. back through La Gran Piedra
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Gran Piedra write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through La Gran Piedra, late in the day. Next is El Salvador.
5. El Salvador
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete El Salvador write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Back at El Salvador. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
El Salvador to La Gran Piedra
El Salvador → La Gran Piedra is 119 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
La Gran Piedra to Dos Palmas Contramaestre
La Gran Piedra → Dos Palmas Contramaestre is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dos Palmas Contramaestre to back through La Gran Piedra
Dos Palmas Contramaestre → back through La Gran Piedra is 72 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Gran Piedra to El Salvador
back through La Gran Piedra → El Salvador is 119 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.