Ampliar

Ampliar

Lying in the northern portion of eastern Cuba, bathed by the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea and outfitted with assorted hotel and extra-hotel offers that are all set to assimilate as many as 10,000 travelers, Holguin has turned into an eye-catching tourist destination in the course of the past fifteen years.

The region has become one of the island nation's largest tourist destinations –second best only to Havana and Varadero. Local authorities have gone at great lengths to protect its biological diversity, to rescue the area's cultural and historic heritage, and have also paid close heed to environmental protection, focusing mostly on its paradise-like beaches and putting a tight cap on littering and indiscriminate tapping of these resources.

This is a safe and healthy destination in terms of natural resources and the environment: There are choices galore for everyone willing to take a closer look at his superb tourist cluster and its wide range of possibilities.

SUN AND BEACH The sun-and-beach segment is by far one of Holguin's premiere attractions highly coveted for visitors coming to the northern coast of Cuba. Powder-thin and whiter-than-white sands, crystal-clear turquoise waters that match with the surrounding dark-green vegetation and lots of other attributes have truly made Holguin the most beautiful land on earth.

Playa Guardalavaca offers 1,184 rooms scattered in the Brisas Guardalavaca and Club Amigo Atlantico Guardalavaca hotels –both owned by Cuban company Cubanacan Hotels. These four-star and three-star resorts, respectively, are sought after for their international standard services.

This tourist region has gone strong for the variety of its extra-hotel offerings as far as cuisine, cafeterias, restaurants, stores, shopping malls, social clubs, disco nightclubs and nautical activities are concerned, let alone a magnificent assortment of recreational options that include fishing, scuba diving, offshore rides, parachuting and grand tours to sightseeing spots and landmarks of great historic, natural or historic values.

Playa Esmeralda counts on 766 rooms in a couple of resorts: the five-star Paradisus Rio de Oro –Spanish group Sol Meliá's flagship trademark- and the Sol Clubs Rio de Luna & Mares, a four-star establishment.

Playa Pesquero was recently enhanced to 1,733 rooms following the opening last winter of the Playa Pesquero Hotel, a five-star lodging facility that ranks as the biggest ever built in Cuba and resembles a small-scale oceanfront city. Two other beachfront hotels there are the LTI Costa Verde Beach Resort and the Super Club Breezes Costa Verde, both run by Gaviota, a Cuban company. Not far from here, travelers will also hit upon Playa Yuraguanal where Holguin's nineteenth hotel will swing its doors wide open later this winter. The new resort will feature international standard services and will make the region's room stock climb to almost 5,000 accommodations.

ECOLOGICAL TOURISM This ever-growing trend worldwide that works like clockwork when it comes to driving mental strain off, has found huge natural richness in the province's vast shoreline, extensive beaches, environmental parks, underwater reserves and mountains that run along the entire northern coast. A couple of nature parks and scores of protected areas teeming with unfathomable beauties are two good cases in point.

Cayo Saetia boasts nature at its best. This is a genuine 34-square-mile nature park, a safe haven for Cuban flora and wildlife showcasing endemic creatures and animals from other tropical countries like antelopes, white-tail deer, ostriches, water buffaloes, crocodiles and birds. All these critters roam freely in the jungle and they are best seen at daybreak and sunset, either in jeep safaris or riding on horseback. Tourists can also take a swim in unexplored beaches, take a spin around the Bay of Nipe and enjoy a good homemade meal.

It features twelve air-conditioned rooms, private bathrooms, TV, small bar, international calling service, restaurant, room service, bar, game arcade, laundry, stores and all-terrain vehicles for rides around the island.

Pinares de Mayari –perched on La Mensura National Park- has a microclimate of its own at 680 yards above sea level. Out there, tourists can make out 300 endemic species of Cuba's finest flora and follow the whereabouts of the wapiti –from the moose family- and the African deer. The place features ecological trails where endemic flora and wildlife are the kings of the party. A garden where only tropical flowers grow under this unique mountain weather is no doubt another must-see. Come to visit the breathtaking Guayabo Waterfalls and the Poza de Rafael, or take a relaxing horseback ride around.

There are twenty rooms equipped with satellite TV, small bars, safety boxes, hot water and phone. The establishment offers bar-restaurant, laundry service, medical assistance, massage, swimming pool, tennis court, volleyball & basketball courts, gym, ecological tours, mountain biking, a visit to the Mayabe Watchtower and to the Holguin Heights at a 15-minute drive from the city and resting on a valley bearing the same name. This countryside recreational center is run by Cuban company Islazul and features a bar, a restaurant, a cafeteria, cabanas and a swimming pool. Not far from there you'll find the Mayabe Farm House, owned by Rumbos Tourist group and outfitted with a restaurant serving Cuban food, live-music shows and occasional hick bashes.

The Bahia de Naranjo Recreational Park is a nautical zone close to Guardalavaca, Esmeralda and Pesquero beaches. Shows of performing dolphins and sea lions, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to swim with dolphins, an aquarium of tropical fish, nautical activities and a festival of marine food are all top choices.

HISTORY Holguin's history and culture hark back 10,000 years ago to the origin of the aboriginal civilization that dwelt the premises at the time when Christopher Columbus landed on Bariay. This historic event shed Spanish influence on the arts, traditions and customs of the entire island nation.

Holguin is the cradle of a culture marked by deep African, Hispanic and Cuban roots highlighted in typical, folkloric and modern dancing, in the performance of Spanish Zarzuela as a reference point within the national framework that praises passion for opera and lyrical singing and adds a touch of guitar riffs and beating bongo drums. Its theaters, museums, art galleries and traditional celebrations underscore the very best Caribbean flavor. Cayo Bariay and its monument devoted to the cultures of both the old world and the new world discovered by Columbus, speaks volumes of this cultural heritage. A case in point is Chorro de Maita and its cemetery-museum that still keeps the mortal remains of the town's first residents, as well as the Taino Village that depicts the life of the island nation's former dwellers.

The whole place combines an offer of history and nature under the wing of the Christopher Columbus Nature Park. The Bani Indo-Cuban Museum in the city of Banes –long recognized as Cuba's archeological capital- is another piece of historic evidence that shows off Holguin as the main cradle of the pre-Hispanic civilization.

The bustling town of Holguin is also known as The City of Parks. The burg's array of parks between Maceo and Libertad streets gives the city a constant touch of freshness and cleanness. Museums, galleries, art houses, theaters, the fine arts and artistic craftsmanship, music, operas and concerts are always there. There are popular celebrations like the Holguin Cultural Week in January, the Mayflower Festival from May 2 to 8 each year, the Carnivals held in August, and the Iberian-American Cultural Party in October. El Bosque Villa and the Pernik Hotel –tallying 410 rooms combined- are two lodging facilities of choice around town.

NAUTICAL ACTIVITIES AND SCUBA DIVING As far as nautical amusement is concerned, there are several scuba diving schools, over forty sites for recreational-contemplative diving, all necessary means for offshore rides aboard boats, catamarans and other light vessels along the many beaches dotting the eastern province of Holguin, plus an international marina with yachting services for the numerous boats that sail across the Caribbean islands.

On the other side of Playa Esmeralda, trippers will find an underwater park decked out with sunken ships and military equipment. There are scuba diving centers at Guardalavaca, Pesquero and Esmeralda beaches, coupled with an international marina at Puerto Vita with 38 docking stalls, refueling service, foodstuff supplies, lodging arrangements, restrooms and nautical activities.

LIFE QUALITY Holguin has developed Health Tourism with a view to improve visitors' life quality, with medical and dental services at its international outpatient clinic in Playa Guardalavaca. The service incorporates hotel calls done by physicians and special treatments at health care centers and HMOs in the province and all across the country. For its part, the Paradisus Rio de Oro Hotel is opening the region's first-ever spa for medical treatments with a variety of high-tech therapies both indoors and out in the open.

For stays of up to three months or longer –a situation that's commonplace for rehabilitating drug addicts- there are such clinics as El Cocal and El Quinque, the two of them in the city of Holguin.

ADVENTURE Holguin has knocked together and developed an expansion program for adventure seekers who love being in touch with nature. Horseback rides down the Cuban countryside, nautical means, planes, yachts, catamarans, choppers and light aircraft (these two for parachuting enthusiasts), mountain climbing and offshore strolls on boat are some of the options waiting for journeyers in one of the Caribbean's most spectacular natural sites.

The jaw-dropping beauty of its valleys and mountains, the unmatchable sites that hold so many flora and wildlife species, the Mensura Hill and the Mayari Pinewoods, the fabulous Guayabo Waterfalls, paradise-like keys like Saetia (this one with magnificent views for photography buffs and one of the province's undisputed symbols), dolphin shows, swims with those same dolphins and a seaquarium brimming with tropical marine life, are guaranteed –make no mistakes about it- to pack a wallop.