[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Claire Boobbyer (BBC) writes about the impressive Carretera Granma, providing breathtaking photos of the road’s highlights and historical landmarks. Boobbyer says, “Few travellers venture to Cuba’s south-eastern corner, but a little-known road offers a fascinating – and stunning – glimpse of the nation’s revolutionary past.” Who wants to come with me?
[. . .] Tracing the edge of eastern Cuba’s foot-shaped Granma province, this back road, which Cubans call the Carretera Granma (or the southern coastal road), is so isolated that Fidel Castro, who launched his grass-roots revolution against the nation’s US-backed president Fulgencio Batista here in 1956, only returned to the area once in his lifetime. The province is named after the 18m motor yacht Castro sailed from his exiled home in Mexico back to Cuba to overthrow the government. After crash-landing almost 100m offshore and thrashing their way through more than 1km of thick mangroves near this very road, Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other revolutionaries set about making modern-day Cuba.
On paper, it makes sense for travellers wishing to go from Granma’s capital, Bayamo, to Cuba’s second city, Santiago de Cuba, to drive some 130km along the central highway. But this remote – and at times, rough – road that slaloms between the turquoise ocean and the steep slopes of the Sierra Maestra mountains on Cuba’s southern edge is so magnificent in parts that it leaves drivers and passengers gawping in awe. In 25 years of travelling to the country, I’ve found it to be the most spectacular road trip in Cuba, and driving it reveals fascinating snapshots of the nation’s revolutionary history alongside the jaw-dropping views.
My trip would take me 420km in all, from Bayamo west to the coast, and then tracing Granma’s triangular shape anticlockwise to Santiago de Cuba. I’d driven this road alone before, but because of Cuba’s ongoing fuel shortages, I booked a second driver, Rafa González, through Bayamo Travel Agent. [. . .]
Driving in Cuba
Transtur is Cuba’s state-run car hire service, though Novela Car is another popular car-hire aggregator and cars hired through them come with a full tank of petrol that doesn’t need refilling when you return the vehicle. [. . .]
As González and I bumped through the potholed roads out of Bayamo, we drove past key figures of Cuba’s 1959 Revolution immortalised in painted portraits on large roadside stone slabs. I felt like I was travelling through the pages of a Cuban history book.
This road reveals traces of Cuban history long before the revolution, though. In the small town of Yara, 44km west of Bayamo, Hatuey, an aboriginal Taíno leader, was burnt at the stake by the Spaniards in 1512. Hatuey refused to convert to Christianity and was murdered for his heresy. [. . .]
After stopping in the sleepy coastal town of Manzanillo for one of Cuba’s best snacks, a small triangular pastelito de guayaba (guava pastry), we journeyed south-west along the ridge of Granma’s “foot”, where banana plantations, coconut palms and almond, flamboyán and mango trees crowded the grassy borders between the tarmac and lilting sugar cane. We pulled in at the ruins of La Demajagua sugar plantation, where in 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes liberated his 53 slaves, marking Cuba’s first wars of independence against Spain. Today, it’s a peaceful site, with butterflies helicoptering over jasmine flowers, a small museum, a venerable jagüey tree shading the few ruins and a bell that once tolled for freedom.
Forty kilometres south in the town of Media Luna, we stopped at the birthplace-turned-museum of the Cuban revolutionary Celia Sánchez. A doctor’s daughter, Sánchez spied for Castro’s nascent 26th of July rebel movement and helped Castro and his men escape Batista’s advancing troops after their Granma ship was wrecked offshore. She later became Castro’s secretary, confidante and – some say – his lover.
After driving along the rough road for another 50km, we reached mainland Cuba’s most southerly cul-de-sac, Cabo Cruz, home to a lone lighthouse, pelicans and a fishing community of 500 homes. Nearby is a series of eight Unesco-protected marine terraces, some climbing 360m high, resembling giant stepping stones. The area is also home to the 275 sq km forested Granma Landing National Park, which is dotted with karstic caves and is where Castro and his men washed up on shore in 1956.
[. . .] “You can see why Fidel and his men took five hours to clamber through the mangroves,” he said, as we stared at the dense wall of green. “They carried 30kg backpacks, a 10kg Winchester rifle; they were not carrying a machete and didn’t know where they were.”
After scrambling through the mangroves, Castro and his men hid out in the nearby Sierra Maestra mountains for two years, surviving on meagre rations, battling disease and coming under fire from Batista’s offensives. [. . .] Today, this coast that once echoed with gunshots is filled with the rustle and call of ibis and the endemic Cuban tody.
[. . .] The island’s highest point, Pico Turquino (1,974m) rises from these rugged peaks, and Castro’s secret rebel headquarters-turned-museum, La Comandancia de la Plata, is hidden in its deeply drawn folds.
[. . .] Pulling into the village of La Plata, we popped into the small Museo Combate de la Plata commemorating Castro’s first revolutionary victory: an attack on a garrison in January 1957, confirming the “Rebel Army existed and was ready to fight”, as Guevara said. The battle proved Castro was alive after Batista had declared him assassinated in an earlier skirmish.
Beyond La Plata, the road meandered around a breathtaking coastline where indigo and turquoise water met grey-black sand coves. Just beyond the village of Uvero, where two monuments commemorate the first key battle of Castro’s army in 1957 when the rebels ambushed an army garrison, the rumpled road flattened. We skirted villages tucked close to black and white sands en route to Santiago, which hosted Castro’s victory speech on 1 January 1959 after Castro succeeded in ousting Batista from power. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240416-the-carretera-granma-one-of-the-most-spectacular-drives-in-cuba
[Photos above by Claire Boobbyer: Cuba’s seldom-travelled Carretera Granma is a rugged mix of beauty, brawn and history; 2) The rugged road climbs high into the mountains where Castro and his forces hid out for two years.]
[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Claire Boobbyer (BBC) writes about the impressive Carretera Granma, providing breathtaking photos of the road’s highlights and historical landmarks. Boobbyer says, “Few travellers venture to Cuba’s south-eastern corner, but a little-known road offers a fascinating – and stunning – glimpse of the nation’s
