Maps of Cuba.
Camaguey
Camagüey
Is the biggest province in the country, with more than 14 thousands square
kilometers, its geography its characterize for extensive plain, which make
the province an ideal place to cultivate the sugar cane and to shepherd a
great number of cattle. This two activities are the most economic important
in this zone, followed by the rice and the citrics.
Camagüey
is not absent of nature beauty, in spite of the apparent monotony of its plains,
the rivers that cross it had been made marvelous green zones and natural pool,
figured in the limestone rock, like the well known forms in the Maximo river,
without reply in no other place in the country
Their
key and little islands in the north and in the south are valuable reservation
of the flora and fauna and its beaches of whiteness sand and transparent waters
are waiting to be conquer
The province
has 120 kilometers of beaches, almost the 25 percent of the whole country,
which convert it in the potential most important tourist focus in Cuba. In
Santa Lucia, with its 20 kilometers of beach, many of them virgin and protected
by a choral barrier, you can learn and practice dive here. The best beaches
in the zone are in the Boca, near the access channel to the Nuevitas Bay,
semi isolated and little visited. Immerse in this water you can see an incredible
choral variety (50 species), more than 200 of sponge and 500 of tropical fishes,
and like a thirty spanish galleon and some ship sank from the II World War.
Following to the west, it can be find the Sabinal key joined to the island
by a road of stone. Romano and Cruz with 40 kilometers of beaches with very
fine sands, are ideal places for dive too. In this zone live an important
colony of pink flamingo on the Caribbean.
The capital
of the province is the city of Camagüey, one of the seven first village
founded by Diego Velazques in 1515, with the name of Santa Maria del Puerto
Principe, in the place known as Punta del Guincho, at the west side of the
Nuevitas Bay. The constant pirates' attack obligated to their firsts residents
to move the city in 1516 to the border of the Caonao river, in 1528 the city
was settled finally in the indian place known as Camaguelo Camaguebax, in
the center of the province. Very soon it lose this peculiar name and it was
named as Puerto Principe, which was losed too. Today every body call it Camagüey.
Camagüey
is known as the Tinajones city. Its first residents were in serious problems
with the absence of water, since its extensive plain is not plentiful in water
sources. However, it rained so much. The problem was how to stock the precious
liquid: Spanish potters settled in the village found the solution to the problem
of stock water. They made the now famous tinajones, a kind of vessel to stock
water, following the models of the spanish vessels that came from Spain with
wine and oil. They found that some local clays were easy to mold, resistant
and with refractory properties. With this clays began the manufacture production
of big vessels named as Tinajones to stock the water. In that way surged the
most important ceramic industry in the country, which maintain its production
in the actual days.
Since
that time, the Tinajon became an important element in every home in Camagüey.
It was located in the most shadow areas, where you can still see them, over
the ground or sunken in the ground to its middle size, but under the channels
that collect the rain water from the roof.
