Gibara
A Whitewashed Colonial Port On Holguin'S North Coast, One Of Only Two Walled Towns Cuba Ever Had, And Home To An International Festival Of Low Budget Cinema · Gibara, Holguin
Gibara sits on a bay thirty kilometres north of Holguin, whitewashed to the point that it has always been called the White Town, and was once the busiest sugar port on this coast. It is one of only two towns in Cuba that were ever walled - the other is Havana - and fragments of the wall and the battery of Fernando VII still stand above the harbour. Nineteenth-century merchants' houses line the square and the malecon, some beautifully kept, some roofless, because Hurricane Ike came straight through in 2008 and the money to rebuild has never been there. In April the town fills for the international film festival that Humberto Solas founded here as a festival of poor cinema, on the argument that a film needs an idea more than it needs a budget. For the rest of the year it is a quiet white town on a blue bay with a cave system at its edge, blue holes along the coast and almost no visitors, thirty kilometres from resorts that send almost nobody.
Parque Calixto Garcia, Gibara, Holguin, Gibara, Holguin, Cuba
The town, the malecon and the squares are open at all times. The Museo de Artes Decorativas and the municipal museum keep daytime hours with a weekly closing day. THE GIBARA FILM FESTIVAL is usually held in APRIL and fills the town completely; dates are announced each year and should be confirmed. Boat trips to the caves and beaches are arranged on the day and depend on fuel.