The Granma provinces offers an alluring natural sanctuary that still echoes with the gunshots of Castro’s guerrilla campaign of the late 1950s. Situated 49 km South of Yara (small town with a big history located between Bayamo and Manzanillo) up a very steep 24 km concrete road from Bartolomé Masó, this precipitous and untamed region contains the country’s highest peak, “Pico Turquino” (just over the border in Santiago de Cuba province) unlimited birdlife and flora, an the rebels’ onetime wartime headquarters, “Comandancia la Plata”.

Comprising a sublime mountain-scape of broccoli-green peaks and humid cloud forest, and home to honest hardworking country folk. Towering 1972 meters above the azure Caribbean “Pico Turquino” so-named for the turquoise hue that colors its steep upper slope is Cuba’s highest and most regularly climbed mountain.

Carpeted in lush cloud forest and protected in 140sq.kms national park’s lofty summit is embellished by a bronze bust of National Hero José Martí, designed by a Cuban sculptor Jilma Madera (she also fashioned the famous Christ statue that stands on the eastern side of Havana harbor). In a patriotic test of endurance the statue was dragged to the top in 1953 by a young Celia Sánchez and her father Manuel Sánchez Silveira to mark the centennial of the Apostle’s birth.