Why this ride
136 km from Río Guayabal de Yateras to Río Guayabal de Yateras, about 3 h 46 of riding. The stops in between: Guantanamo, El Salvador and back through Guantanamo.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Yateras and El Salvador
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 136 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 3 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. 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 is where the day begins. Next is Guantanamo.
2. 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 comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Next is El Salvador.
3. 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
about 69 km into the recorded legs you reach El Salvador. Next is back through Guantanamo.
4. back through Guantanamo
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 through Guantanamo, late in the day. Next is Yateras.
5. 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 at Yateras. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
Yateras to Guantanamo
Yateras → Guantanamo is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Guantánamo to El Salvador
Guantánamo → El Salvador is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
El Salvador to back through Guantanamo
El Salvador → back through Guantanamo is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Guantanamo to Yateras
back through Guantanamo → Yateras is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.