CubaPLUS Magazine

As if it were a fantasy, the waterfall called Salto Fino gracefully cuts through the air 305 meters giving the impression, from far away, that it is a silver thread in the middle of the Nipe-Sagua mountain range in Baracoa,  northeast of the country.

Although the volume of its torrent is not impressive, due to its route from height, it is placed among the top 20 in the world. Salto Fino is, therefore, one more reason to think that Creation was particularly kind to the land that is now known as Baracoa, prodigal in aquifers and biodiversity of the forest, to also give it the highest waterfall in the insular Caribbean.

That wonder occurs when the Salto Fino river, on its way as a sub-tributary of the mighty Toa current, suffers a sudden interruption of its channel to meet the Inferno stream. All this in the midst of the profoundly green landscapes of the Quibiján-Duaba-Yunque de Baracoa Ecological Reserve, in the province of Guantánamo.

These water currents have a surface and underground micro-basin of three square kilometers. The Salto Fino waterfall drops from a height of 295 meters with a total drop of 305 m. Seen up close, 8 waterfalls between 75 and 90 degrees can be seen, the largest of which reaches 60 m verticality.

Salto Fino was seen for the first time in 1966 by the doctor and eminent geographer Antonio Núñez Jiménez, who was then able to take several photographs of it with vertical views while flying in a helicopter.

But not until 1996, the expeditions that found Salto Fino by land were carried out, where no one had apparently reached before. With a reputation for being the Cuban region with the highest average annual rainfall, favored by the clouds that discharge their content there, brought by the trade winds from the north when they collide with the mountains, the environment that surrounds Salto Fino has a virginal appearance and is land inhabited by valuable and rare species of Antillean flora and fauna.