Why this ride
A 101 km round trip from Guantánamo - roughly 2 h 46 in the saddle. It goes by way of El Salvador, Niceto Pérez and back through El Salvador.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Guantánamo and Niceto Pérez
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 101 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 2 h 46
- 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. Guantánamo
Most people know Guantánamo for two things: a song and a naval base. The song, Guantanamera, about a peasant girl from Guantánamo, became one of the most famous Cuban tunes in the world, with verses adapted from the poetry of José Martí. The base, leased to the United States since 1903 on the shores of Guantánamo Bay, is a separate, fenced enclave south of the city, and it is not a place you can visit. The city itself, in the far east of Cuba, is a sleepy provincial capital with a grid of low, colourful houses, a central square and a strong musical tradition. It is the birthplace of changüí, a rustic ancestor of son, played with tres guitar, bongos and marímbula.
Read the complete Guantanamo write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Guantánamo is where the day begins. Next is El Salvador.
2. 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 comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Niceto Pérez.
3. Niceto Pérez
Niceto Pérez is a rural municipality in the hills just west of the city of Guantánamo, in the far east of Cuba, a region of sugar cane, small farms and mountains rising towards the Sierra Maestra and the coffee country of the Gran Piedra. It is not a place that features in many guidebooks, and that is part of its interest. The surrounding hills hold the remains of the coffee plantations established in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by French planters fleeing the revolution in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, and the archaeological landscape of those first coffee plantations in the south east of Cuba is listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Niceto Pérez write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 50 km into the recorded legs you reach Niceto Pérez. Next is back through El Salvador.
4. back through 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 through El Salvador, late in the day. Next is Guantanamo.
5. Guantánamo
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Guantanamo write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Back at Guantanamo. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
Guantánamo to El Salvador
Guantánamo → El Salvador is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
El Salvador to Niceto Pérez
El Salvador → Niceto Pérez is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Niceto Pérez to back through El Salvador
Niceto Pérez → back through El Salvador is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through El Salvador to Guantanamo
back through El Salvador → Guantanamo is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.