Baconao Park, Santiago de Cuba. Cuba

• Santiago de Cuba
• Daily
• Destination: Santiago de Cuba

Rating Baconao Park

Your experience is very valuable for other travelers.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Baconao Park has many attributes that identify it. By its untamable nature as well as for its archaeological values, it’s owner of a great caudal of legends and vital information for the study about marine and terrestrial species.

It was inhabited since the times of the aboriginals and its hills served like refuge to immigrants coming from the near island of Haiti, those that built in the place comfortable ranches for the establishment of colonists who were big producing of coffee.   The name Baconao comes from a local legend of an indigenous little boy that he lived in the south of Cuba during the pre-Columbian stage. The legend counts about a magic tree called Bacona, that taught the boy to play music using the snails of the lagoon, because he has the costume to go and sit himself down to the shade of the Bacona tree to play music with his snails.

The inhabitants of this area were fascinated and they thought that the abilities to play music of a snail were given by the tree, fact by which they started to call the boy by the nickname “Baconao”. One day, the boy went to take a walk around, and he never came back. With the time the music that boy played with his snails was listened among trees and the residents thought that this magic had stayed in the trees, and with course of time, they began to call the area “Baconao”.

The big areas offer different geographical contrasts such as marine terraces and mountainous elevations with a exuberant vegetation that endow this site like an unforgettable place to be in contact with an almost virgin nature.  The development of the Baconao Park has been based on the natural potential of the region and in the creativity and imagination of the human being to become this place in a charming place that not for pleasure it was denominated like "La Riviera del Caribe".
 

Baconao Park Map

Baconao Park is located in Santiago de Cuba

It limits to the north with the province of Holguín; to the west with Granma; to the south with the Caribbean Sea, and to the east with the province of Guantánamo. The province covers a total area of 6 343 21 , Km². You can get here through Antonio Maceo International Airport, also by road from any other part of Cuba, or by sea ─in this last case, requesting the services from Punta Gorda Marina.

Two particular features characterizes Santiago de Cuba that make it exceptional: its hospitality, with people of happy and relaxed temperament and its rich historical-cultural wealth. Its Caribbean identity is evident in its popular music and in folklore manifestations. It depicts the title of Heroine City of the Republic of Cuba for the role carried out by its inhabitants in the revolutionary struggle during the decade of 1950. Privileged by its historical past, in Santiago de Cuba there are two of the Cuban places distinguished by UNESCO with the title of World Heritage: the San Pedro de la Roca Castle and the ruins of the first French coffee plantations in La Gran Piedra. The Santa Ifigenia cemetery , the 26 of July Historical Museum and the Siboney Farm, are places indissolubly linked to the history of Cuba.

Cayo Granma and Baconao Park (Biosphere Reserve) also part of the attractiveness of this region. As a tourist destination, Santiago de Cuba, combines excellent possibilities for the enjoyment of beaches, city and nature tourism for to the places of interest in those three scenarios.

For those who arrive in Santiago de Cuba, there are diverse lodging options in the city and in its surroundings, linked as much to the sea as to nature. With a variety of categories and levels of comfort, it will always be a guarantee for the visitors looking for harmony and soothing rest. There are other things, among so many, that make people from Santiago proud: to be the birthplace, par excellence, of almost all the musical genres of Cuba, a country where the music is soul and root; also, the carnivals that every month of July take place here, are the most spectacular in the country; as well as their rum, the well-known Fiestas del Fuego and the already traditional Festival of the Caribbean.

The region of Santiago de Cuba has the necessary infrastructure to encourage tourism of events and congresses; it also has in its mountainous and seafaring environment the conditions to develop nature and adventure tourism, trekking, nautical activities, and health tourism. But there is nothing better than walk its undulating and narrow streets loaded with history and music at the same time.