The young province of Artemisa, born at the beginning of 2011 very close to the Cuban capital, extends through a beautiful region of fertile lands, admirable landscapes and populated with a rich simply enchanting historical and cultural tradition.To get to know it better, we recommend a visit to the cheerful city of San Antonio de los Baños, the second most important in the region, also rightly called San Antonio del Humor, because of the tradition of festivals with this theme that has accumulated for many years, and because of to be the headquarters of the original Museum of Humor of Cuba. San Antonio, founded as a village at the end of the 18th century by leading people and emigrants Canaries, was based on a fertile land irrigated by the beautiful Ariguanabo river, already inhabited since long before.
However, it began to gain momentum from the aforementioned date, due to the properties salutary that were attributed to its waters, propitious for pleasant baths. With its airs of a laughing provincial town, it is currently also recognized for hosting the International School of New Latin American Cinema, founded by Gabriel García Márquez and Fernando Birri, a center of great prestige and a deep cultural footprint in the region and the continent.We now suggest a lovely little rural community, named Las Terrazas, located in areas of the Sierra del Rosario, whose inhabitants are dedicated to the promotion of tourism and a sustainable economy, in full harmony with nature. This town, located about 75 km from Havana, was included by Unesco in the list of Places classified as Biosphere Reserve, since 1985. It has the merit of working there on the project that insists on the recovery and conservation of a natural habitat that had been greatly despoiled by deforestation promoted by man, since the Spanish colonization.
With an ancient coffee tradition, which is no longer practiced, it owes its name to the way in which it is they worked the slopes of the mountains -terraces- to carry out the gigantic process of reforestation carried out there since the late 60s. Las Terrazas is a stunning landscape and a human community of rich traditions cultural, worth knowing in Artemisa.Not far from there we have the third suggestion: the refreshing Baños del San Juan, some limpid natural pools belonging to that environment. They are a kind of country and rustic spa, with a very seductive romantic air due to its roaring waterfall. Nowhere else will you find more delicious natural pools.
And continuing in properties close to that habitat we cannot avoid talking about our fourth proposal: the somewhat princely Castillo de las Nubes, a place with excellent panoramic views, because it is located on top of the hill called El Fuerte. It is a mansion built in the middle of the 20th century, imitating the architecture of the medieval. Refurbished and later converted into a hotel, you can find items belonging to authentic medieval castles that their founder bought at auction long ago to create his utopian home.
Finally, we have a very special cultural offer: The vestiges of the old coffee plantation Angerona, components of a farm producing the aromatic grain from the beginning of the XIX century, highly appreciated in the pillars of the Cuban economy since the colony. It was one of the most beautiful symbols of the economic splendor of a stage that lavished prosperous farms in the mountains of the eastern part of the country and, to a lesser extent in the west, where Angerona was its point of greatest connotation.
Site that coined a beautiful legend of love and shocking true stories, the ruins will captivate you with the irresistible magic of the eternal and beautiful.