Why this ride
From Guantánamo it runs 500 km to Guantánamo; allow about 10 h 49 of riding. On the way it passes Yateras, La Gran Piedra, San Pedro de la Roca Castle and back through La Gran Piedra. The line favours views over speed.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
El Salvador and San Pedro de la Roca Castle
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 500 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 10 h 49
- 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.
Scenic road chapters
La Gran Piedra → San Pedro de la Roca Castle
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 34 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 37 km
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 Yateras.
2. Yateras
Yateras is coffee country in the hills of Guantánamo province, at the far eastern end of Cuba, and getting here feels like leaving the island most visitors know. The municipality climbs from the dry lowlands around Guantánamo city into green, steep mountains, part of the great Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa range that runs along the north-east of the island.
Read the complete Yateras write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Yateras comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Gran Piedra.
3. 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
about 214 km into the recorded legs you reach La Gran Piedra. Next is San Pedro de la Roca Castle.
4. San Pedro de la Roca Castle
Where the narrow mouth of Santiago de Cuba's bay meets the open Caribbean, a castle climbs the headland in terraces of stone. San Pedro de la Roca, often called simply El Morro, was designed in the seventeenth century by the Italian military engineer Giovanni Battista Antonelli, from a family that built defences across the Spanish Caribbean. It was meant to shut the door on the pirates and privateers who had sacked Santiago more than once, and its tiered batteries, drawbridges and stairs follow the rock so closely that the fortress seems carved from it. It became a World Heritage Site in 1997 as the best preserved example of Spanish-American military architecture of its type.
Read the complete San Pedro de la Roca Castle write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
San Pedro de la Roca Castle, about halfway. Next is back through La Gran Piedra.
5. 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 sits at 243 km, about halfway. Next is back through Yateras.
6. back through Yateras
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yateras write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through Yateras comes up about 437 km into the recorded legs. Next is El Salvador.
7. 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
El Salvador closes the day.
Leg by leg
El Salvador to Yateras
El Salvador → Yateras is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yateras to La Gran Piedra
Yateras → La Gran Piedra is 152 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
La Gran Piedra to San Pedro de la Roca Castle
La Gran Piedra → San Pedro de la Roca Castle is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
San Pedro de la Roca Castle to back through La Gran Piedra
San Pedro de la Roca Castle → back through La Gran Piedra is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Gran Piedra to back through Yateras
back through La Gran Piedra → back through Yateras is 152 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Yateras to El Salvador
back through Yateras → El Salvador is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.