Pico Turquino

Where is Pico Turquino?

Pico Turquino is part of the Sierra Maestra.

You will find it in: Cuba.

Summit: 19.989° N, 76.836° W

The story behind it

Pico Turquino is the highest point in Cuba and stands in the Sierra Maestra, the mountain chain along the island's south-eastern coast. The first recorded climb was made in 1860 by the Englishman Fred W. Ramsden with three porters; the next one followed only in 1915, when the Swedish botanist Erik Leonard Ekman went up without knowing of Ramsden's visit. In 1953, for the hundredth birthday of José Martí, Celia Sánchez Manduley carried a bust of the Cuban writer and independence hero to the summit; it had been made by the sculptor Jilma Madera. In the years that followed the mountain became a symbol: Fidel Castro's fighters climbed it in 1957, and for many Cubans reaching the top still counts as a point of honour. Where the name comes from is not settled, with some tracing it to the Spanish word for turquoise and others to the Taíno words turey, sky, and quino. Pico Turquino is also the only place in Cuba where snowfall has ever been officially recorded, in February 1900.

Find it on the globe

Pico Turquino is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.