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Destination:Isla de la juventud

To the special municipality Isla de la Juventud, to the adult among them, there are more than 600 isles that are part of the southern Canarreos Archipelago; many usually called the Island of the Thousand Names.

Camarcó named it the aboriginal ones, when in its second trip to the New World were discovered, June, 13, 1494, for the Genovese admiral Christopher Columbus who then baptized her as La Evangelista. Island of the Treasure or Island of the Parrots, they were names with those that it was also known before at the beginning of the XIX century, Spain decided to colonize it, giving origin to the colony Reina Amalia whose capital, Nueva Gerona, was founded December 17 ,1830.

Under peninsular domain it began to be called Island of the Deported, because precisely there, completed condemnation, those who were opposed to the dictation of the metropolises, and later on Isla de Pinos, name with which arrived the year 1975 when it was solved to denominate it Isla de la Juventud.

Distant not much more than 100 kilometers to the south of Batabanó, in the province of Havana, this enormous island in a capricious way, and of about 2 200 surface km2, what transforms it into the second in extension of the Cuban archipelago, and it was during more than three centuries place of having forced saturates for as much as pirate or corsair furrowed the waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Threatened by England, requested in purchase by Belgium and disputed by the United States of North America, it also served from establishment to colonies of Japanese and Cayman Island dwellers, these last ones arrived between 1903 and 1910 to the south-occident of the territory, where they founded the village of Jacksonville.

Numerous tourist attractiveness store the Isla de la Juventud, although without doubts the good known one of all is the International Center of Diving The Colony, located in areas of the National Marine Park Punta Frances, traditional headquarters of the international encounters of submarine picture, Photosub, which testifies the excellent quality of its marine funds.

The cave number 1 of Punta del Este, considered by the experts as the Chapel Sistine from the Caribbean Rupestrian Art when conserving in its walls more than 200 aboriginal pictography, it is a place of much attractive for who solves to travel to this island that has in the cultivation of citric, its reservations of marble of first quality and the artistic and utilitarian ceramic production, three fundamental economic axes.

In the northeastern portion the beach of Bibijagua, of attractive black sands, constitutes a place of a lot of interest near which there are two important museums: El Presidio Modelo, a unique penitentiary of its type in America, and in which kept prison the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro; and the farm El Abra, declared National Monument and very linked to the Cuban Apostle's life, José Martí.

Native of this earth is the Sucu-Sucu, contagious musical rhythm that has also arrived until Cayo Largo del Sur to encourage the first "Island Everything Included of the Caribbean. This paradisiacal island has an International Airport and 24 kilometers of beaches, of which Sirena Beach is its main attractiveness.

Cayo Largo view

The possibility to practice the submarine picture, the fishing, or the diving in more than 30 immersion places; to carry out tourist journeys with observation of birds through their big areas of swamps, or to visit the near Iguana Key, Rico Key or Rosario Key, all excellently conserved and of a beauty and privacy without parallel, they supplement the offer of this destination that, as the Isla de la Juventud, it stands out the tourist values of the Canarreos Archipelago.