Turquino - Up and over to the sea
Get set for a true adventure – a multi-sport tour that incudes cycling, hiking, swimming, and, for those who wish, horseback riding. There will even be a city walk in Manzanillo, a lively port city with a history of smuggling during colonial times, and, more recently, the birthplace of the Cuban Communist Party.
Our focus on this tour will be getting up and over Pico Turquino, Cuba’s highest mountain at nearly 2000 metres in the ruggedly majestic Sierra Maestra mountains. In 1953, it was at Turquino’s summit that Celia Sanchez, Fidel Castro’s most trusted companion, placed a bust of the most influential figure in Cuba’s revolutionary history, José Martí. And it was high up on Turquino’s slopes that Fidel Castro established his revolutionary “comandancia” (headquarters) three years later at La Plata. It was from this impressive location that he directed the Cuban Revolution until his army was strong enough to descend and take over the whole island in 1959.
The buildings at la Plata remain as a museum and a place of pilgrimage for graduating university students. This area is hot during the day, but the higher one gets the more unpredictable the weather can be, including the occasional fog and sudden rainfalls and cold night time temperatures. On one occasion, some of us camped overnight in a hut in these mountains and were grateful for the aluminum sleeping bags we had brought with us, despite the crinkling noise they made every time we moved.
The cycling part of this tour will begin in Holguin and end temporarily in Bartolomé Masó, a small town in the Sierra Maestra foothills. From here, we will begin our hike in these ruggedly scenic mountains filled with birds, especially hummingbirds, and home to plants found nowhere else in Cuba. There are few other animals and even fewer people, so we will be packing in our own food and water in our backpacks. You will see why this was ideal guerilla territory and would be well advised to wear hiking shoes or boots, long pants and long-sleeved shirts and to use walking poles for the three days of trekking.
From our starting point it is only 3k to La Plata, but the narrow path can make it a challenging hike. Coffee is grown here, and one of the treats of this part of the tour will be the opportunity to buy dark-roast Cuban coffee from a local family. There is no fresher coffee than what these mountain folks produce and roast themselves.
The cycling part of the tour will start again on the other side of Turquino with a ride to an all-inclusive beach hotel for two days during which we can visit an insecticide-free bee farm on horseback (or by jeep) before getting back on the bikes for the final leg to Manzanillo. Along the way, we can stop at Pilon where Celia Sanchez grew up under the influence of her extraordinary father before she joined Fidel Castro in the mountains.
Accompanied by a youth cycling club from Las Tunas, the terracotta ceramic decorated “City of Sculpture”, we will ride the last leg to Las Tunas where the club members will host us for a typical Cuban pig-roast. There we can donate much-needed cycling equipment and gear to them before bussing back to Holguin the next day for the flight home from what we hope will have been an interesting and enjoyable experience for all of you.