Kuba

Santiago är hetare, flirtigare, mer avspänt och mer afrokaribiskt än resten av Kuba. Här föddes Bacardin, revolutionen och Buena Vista Social Club. Följ med till staden som är backig som San Francisco och ligger närmare Jamaica än Havanna.

Varadero, located on the sinuous 20km-long Hicacos Peninsula, stands at the vanguard of Cuba’s most important industry – tourism. As the largest resort in the Caribbean, it guards a huge, unsubtle and constantly evolving stash of hotels (over 60), shops, water activities and poolside entertainment; though its trump card is its beach, an uninterrupted 20km stretch of blond sand that is undoubtedly one of the Caribbean's best. But, while this large, tourist-friendly mega-resort may be essential to the Cuban economy, it offers little in the way of unique Cuban experiences.

With a name translating as 'massacres,' Matanzas Province conceals an appropriately tumultuous past beneath its modern-day reputation for glam all-inclusive holidays. In the 17th century pillaging pirates ravaged the region's prized north coast, while three centuries later, more invaders grappled ashore in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) under the dreamy notion that they were about to liberate the nation.

Neither Occidente nor Oriente, Camagüey is Cuba's provincial contrarian, a region that likes to go its own way in political and cultural matters – and usually does – defying expectations in Havana and Santiago. These seeds were sown in the colonial era, when Camagüey's preference for cattle ranching over sugarcane meant less reliance on slave labor and more enthusiasm to eliminate the whole system.

Vagabonds guide till Cayo Largo – Kubas viktigaste äggläggningsplats för sköldpaddor som också bjuder på vita sandstränder och suverän dykning.

In his song 'Cienfuegos,' Benny Moré described his home city as the city he liked best. He wasn't the settlement's only cheerleader. Cuba's so-called 'Pearl of the South' has long seduced travelers from around the island with its elegance, enlightened French airs and feisty Caribbean spirit. If Cuba has a Paris, this is most definitely it.

Havana's Old Town – the site where the city first took root in 1519 – is one of the historical highlights of Latin America, an architectural masterpiece where fastidiously preserved squares and grandiose palaces sit alongside a living, breathing urban community still emerging from the economic chaos of the 1990s. The overall result is by turns grand and gritty, inspiring and frustrating, commendable and lamentable. No one should leave Cuba without seeing it.

Elegant and old, this relatively hush city spells oasis to the traveler weary of confrontation. Predating both Havana and Santiago, it has been cast for time immemorial as the city that kick-started Cuban independence. Yet self-important it isn't. The ciudad de los coches (city of horsecarts) is an easygoing, slow-paced, trapped-in-time place, where you're more likely to be quoted literature than sold trinkets. Cuba's balmiest provincial capital, it resounds to the clip-clop of hooves; nearly half the population use horses for daily travel.

Matanzas is like a sunken galleon left at the bottom of the ocean. Most casual visitors to Cuba sail right over the top of it (usually on a tour bus to Varadero), but, a few curious adventurers dive down and discover that this ostensibly scruffy city is still full of priceless treasure. Go back a few generations and Matanzas was a very different place. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the city developed a gigantic literary and musical heritage, and was regularly touted as the ‘Athens of Cuba.' Two pivotal Cuban musical forms, danzón and rumba, were hatched here, along with various religions of African origin. Matanzas also hosts one of Cuba’s finest theaters, and was the birthplace of some of its most eloquent poets and writers. Despite the contemporary aura of decay, the cultural riches haven’t disappeared. You just need patience, imagination and a Sherlock Holmes hat to disentangle them.

Beguiling, outlandish and surreal, Baracoa's essence is addictive. On the wet and windy side of the Cuchillos del Toa mountains, Cuba’s oldest and most isolated town exudes original atmosphere.