Page 89 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Cuba

Western Cuba ❮❮ 87

Nueva Gerona
9 NORTH COAST DRIVE
MAP D4 • Iglesia Nuestra
Señora de los Dolores: (46) 32 3791;
hours vary • Museo de Historia Latin American Havana
School for
Bahía
Natural: (46) 32 3143; open 8am–5pm Cayo Honda Medical Sciences
Tue–Sat, 8am–noon Sun; adm Levisa CN A4
La
The sleepy capital city of Isla de la Palma Las Mariel
Juventud has a graceful colonial core Pozas Soroa
of venerable one-story buildings with Pan de CC
columns supporting red-tiled roofs. Viñales Guajaibón
The Iglesia Nuestra Señora de los A4
Dolores is a lovely church on the MORNING
main plaza, with a small museum.
The Museo de Historia Natural shows Leave Havana in a rental car
re-creations of local natural habitats. and head west along Avenue
5ta, which leads past the Latin
American School for Medical
Sciences, where inter national
students receive free medical
training. Pass through the port
town of Mariel, onto Carretera
2-1-3, a winding and gently
rolling road frequented by
ox-drawn carts. After about two
hours of driving past sugarcane
fields, turn south at the sign for
Soroa (see p85) and follow the
road as it curls uphill through
The derelict Presidio Modelo pine forest. Take the time to
explore the orchid garden
Presidio Modelo
0 and hike the short trail to the
Cascadas El Salto water fall.
MAP D4 • (46) 32 5112 • Open
8am–4pm Tue–Sat, 8am–noon Sun Enjoy lunch at one of the restau-
• Adm (extra charge for cameras) rants in the area before you go.
This former penitentiary (see p38) on AFTERNOON
the outskirts of Nueva Gerona was
built in 1926. In October 1953, Fidel Returning to the highway, con-
Castro and 25 other revolutionaries tinue west through the towns
were imprisoned here after the failed of Bahía Honda and Las Pozas,
with the Sierra del Rosario
attack on the Moncada barracks (see moun tains to the south. The Pan
p37). Today the prison hospital is a de Guajaibón – a dramatic mogote
museum recalling the 20 months – can be reached by turning south
they spent here. Castro’s room still at the hamlet of Rancho Canelo.
contains the collection of books he Farther west beyond Las Pozas,
used to instruct fellow prisoners. turn north for the ferry dock
to Cayo Levisa (see p85), where
you can enjoy an overnight stay
CORK PALM at a charming hotel. Boats depart
at 10am and 6pm. Alternatively,
Found only in a few tiny pockets continue west beyond La Palma
of the Sierra del Rosario, Cuba’s to Viñales. The road cuts through
endemic Palma corcho is a primitive tobacco fields before emerging
member of the cycad family. Growing in the Valle de San Vicente. Turn
in an ecosystem badly threatened by southward at the T-junction for
deforestation, the species reproduces Viñales. Two affordable hotels
with difficulty, although individual sit atop mogotes and casas
palms live to be more than 300 years. particulares (private rooms)
As a result, this so-called “living fossil” are also available.
faces possible extinction.
See map on pp84–5
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