CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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.
From Santiago de Cuba it runs 354 km to Santiago de Cuba; allow about 7 h 11 of riding. It goes by way of Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff, Yateras and back through Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 68 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
San Pedro de la Roca Castle is where the day begins. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff comes up about 99 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 177 km into the recorded legs you reach Yateras. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff, late in the day. Next is San Pedro de la Roca Castle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete San Pedro de la Roca Castle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at San Pedro de la Roca Castle. That is the ride.
San Pedro de la Roca Castle → Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff is 99 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff → Yateras is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Yateras → back through Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff is 79 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Archaeological Landscape of the First Coff → San Pedro de la Roca Castle is 98 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.