El Nicho is a river coming down the Escambray mountains of central Cuba in steps, and every step holds a pool. The Hanabanilla drops through the forest as a chain of cascades and basins, each one spilling into the next, and at the tallest step the water falls about fifteen metres in silver ribbons over dark rock. The colour comes off the ground it runs over. The river crosses pale limestone and carries its fine minerals, which scatter sunlight toward the blue-green end, so the pools shade from clear green to turquoise. They look deepest in colour on bright days and in the calm flow of the dry months, and they turn milky brown after heavy rain. The water itself is cold, around eighteen degrees, colder than the Caribbean in any month of the year.
Reino de las Aguas, the Kingdom of the Waters, is the path down: about a kilometre and a half of forest through ferns, orchids and birdsong. It crosses small wooden footbridges strung between the upper pools, where the river slides over rock ledges into clear green basins on either side of you, then passes calmer tiers like La Cristal before the ground drops away toward the main cascade. The forest above the falls is where to look for the tocororo, Cuba's national bird, whose red, white and blue plumage matches the flag. Cubans keep it as an emblem of freedom for another reason: it sickens and dies in a cage. Its soft, repeated to-co-ro-ro usually gives it away before you catch sight of it. After the summer and autumn rains the whole staircase runs fullest and loudest, and in the dry months it settles and clears. The basins are deep enough to swim across, and on hot afternoons local children climb the rocks and leap in beside you. At the bottom step you can stand close enough to the fifteen-metre drop to feel the spray and the cool air it pushes out ahead of itself.