CubaPLUS Magazine

The tourist routes which currently are getting ready in the Archaeological Landscape properties of the first Cuban south east’s coffee plantations will make possible to the visitors the discovery of a Humanity’s heritage surrounding. 

Sources of Dranguet’s House, Interpretation and Popularization Centre for the Coffee Industry Cultural Heritage, explained that one of those planned paths will connect through about 25 kilometers the districts one and two, belonging to the Gran Piedra (Great Stone) and to the old property Fraternidad (Fraternity).   

Outstanding landscape, natural, historical and cultural values blessed these countryside surroundings where French colonialists arrived with their respective slave groups as the result of the Haiti’s revolution outbreak at the end of 18^th century and beginnings of the 19^th century. 

Those routes disclose to the tourists an extraordinary biodiversity and traditions and age-old customs which are deeply rooted in those rural communities, benefited from the international project The Coffee Roads supported by the Foundation Malongo, the European Union and the City Heritage Conservation Office (OCC). 

One of the exclusives in those amazements will be the funeral legacy in so old plantations and archaeological signs associated to the farming development and the industrial use of the coffee grain in the mountains. 

Located between Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo provinces, are 171 the old agricultural emporiums declared as World Heritage and the OCC applies an integrated management plan of that scenery which is organized in both circuits. 

The first one, corresponding to the Great Stone, embraces the coffee plantations La Idalia, La Isabelica, La Gran Sofía, Las Mercedes and La Siberia, while the Fraternity circuit, includes the coffee plantation of the same name as well as San Felipe, San Juan de Escocia, San Luis de Jacas and Santa Paulina. 

Hiking is booming and this opportunity will strengthen the understanding of sustainable tourism in the use and enjoyment of these treasures, in which the under construction Fraternity echo-archaeological Park is inserted, this place is located in the Ramón de las Yaguas area, near to the boundaries between both provinces.