Kuba

Tobacco is still king on Cuba's western fingertip, a rolling canvas of rust-red oxen-furrowed fields, thatched tobacco-drying houses and sombrero-clad guajiros (country folk).

Habana del Este is home to Playas del Este, a multiflavored if slightly unkempt beach strip situated 18km east of Habana Vieja. While the beaches here are sublime, the accompanying resorts aren't exactly luxurious. Rather, Playas del Este has a timeworn and slightly abandoned air, and aspiring beach loungers might find the ugly Soviet-style hotel piles more than a little incongruous. But for those who dislike modern tourist development or are keen to see how Cubans get out and enjoy themselves, Playas del Este is a breath of fresh air.

Vagabonds guide till Santiago. Tips på sevärdheter, restauranger, boenden, bästa musikställena och mycket mer.

Situated in the Archipiélago de Sabana-Camagüey, or the Jardines del Rey (King’s Gardens) as travel brochures prefer to call it, Cayo Coco is Cuba's fourth-largest island, a 370-sq-km beach-rimmed key that is unashamedly dedicated to tourism. The area north of the Bahía de Perros (Bay of Dogs) was uninhabited before 1992, when the first hotel – the Cojímar – went up on adjoining Cayo Guillermo. The bulldozers haven't stopped buzzing since.

La Victória de Las Tunas (as it's officially known) is a sleepy agricultural town anointed provincial capital. It has long held a sleazy reputation for being the Oriente's capital of sex tourism. But thanks to good private lodgings, welcoming locals and a handy location on Cuba's arterial Carretera Central, handfuls of road-weary travelers drop by and are pleasantly surprised. Missing here are the touts that exasperate tourists in other destinations. It's a window into real provincial life.

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.

Embellished by soaring pine trees and bulbous limestone cliffs that teeter like top-heavy haystacks above placid tobacco plantations, Parque Nacional Viñales is one of Cuba's most magnificent natural settings. Wedged spectacularly into the Sierra de los Órganos mountain range, this 11km-by-5km valley was recognized as a national monument in 1979, with Unesco World Heritage status following in 1999 for its dramatic steep-sided limestone outcrops (known as mogotes), coupled with the vernacular architecture of its traditional farms and villages.

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.

When Pinar del Río's greenery starts to erupt into craggy mogotes (limestone monoliths) and you spy a cigar-chewing guajiro driving his oxen and plough through a rust-colored tobacco field, you know you've arrived in Viñales. Despite its longstanding love affair with tourism, this slow, relaxed, wonderfully traditional settlement is a place that steadfastly refuses to put on a show. What you see here is what you get – an agricultural town where front doors are left wide open, everyone knows everyone else, and a night out on the tiles involves sitting on a sillón (rocking chair) on a rustic porch analyzing the Milky Way.

A historic refuge from the law for everyone from 16th-century pirates to 20th-century gangsters, La Isla is perhaps the quirkiest castaway destination you ever will see. Dumped like a crumpled apostrophe 100km off mainland Cuba, this pine-tree-clad island is the Caribbean's sixth-largest. But the Cayman Islands this isn't. Other tourists? Uh-uh. And if you thought mainland Cuba's towns were time-warped, try blowing the dust off island capital Nueva Gerona, where the main street doubles as a baseball diamond, and the food ‘scene’ is stuck in the Special Period. Yet, if you make it here, you're in for a true adventure. The main lure is diving some of the Caribbean's most pristine reefs, but otherwise get used to being becalmed with the coral, the odd crocodile and a colorful history that reads like an excerpt from Treasure Island.