Baconao
A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve East Of Santiago Containing Two Hundred Concrete Dinosaurs, A National Transport Museum, A Lagoon And The Beach The Moncada Attackers Set Out From · Santiago de Cuba, Santiago de Cuba
Baconao is eight hundred square kilometres of coast and dry hills east of Santiago, declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1987, and what is scattered across it is unlike anything else in Cuba. In one valley stand more than two hundred life-size concrete dinosaurs and prehistoric humans, built in the nineteen eighties, weathering gently and entirely sincere. A few kilometres on, a national transport museum holds thousands of model cars and a collection of real ones. There is a lagoon with a crocodile enclosure and a reconstructed indigenous village, an international sculpture park, an artists' community, an aquarium, and at Siboney the small farmhouse from which the attackers set out for the Moncada Barracks in July 1953. Coffee plantation ruins from the UNESCO landscape lie in the hills above. Nothing is near anything else, several of the attractions are frankly faded, and you need a car and a whole day - but the dinosaur valley alone justifies both.
Parque Baconao, east of Santiago de Cuba, Santiago de Cuba, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
The reserve roads are open at all times and the coast is public. The Valle de la Prehistoria, the Museo Nacional de Transporte Terrestre, the aquarium and the Granjita Siboney all keep daytime hours with separate charges and their own closing days. NOTHING IS CLOSE TO ANYTHING ELSE - the reserve runs for tens of kilometres along the coast. Transport depends on fuel.