La Gran Piedra and Niceto Pérez

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. 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 is where the day begins. Next is Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff.

2. 2. Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff

   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.

   Read the complete Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Niceto Pérez.

3. 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 107 km into the recorded legs you reach Niceto Pérez. Next is back through Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff.

4. 4. back through Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff, late in the day. Next is La Gran Piedra.

5. 5. 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 at La Gran Piedra. That is the ride.