Kuba

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.

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.

Cuba's cultural capital, Santiago is a frenetic, passionate and noisy beauty. Situated closer to Haiti and the Dominican Republic than to Havana, it leans east rather than west, a crucial factor shaping this city's unique identity, steeped in Afro-Caribbean, entrepreneurial and rebel influences.

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.

What is that word hanging in the air over Villa Clara, one of the nation's most diverse provinces? 'Revolution,' perhaps? And not just because Che Guevara liberated its capital, Santa Clara, from Batista's corrupt gambling party to kick-start the Castro brothers' 58-year (and counting) stint in power. Oh, no. Ultra-cultural Santa Clara is guardian of the Cuban avant-garde (having the nation's only drag show and its main rock festival). Meanwhile, the picturesque colonial town of Remedios and the beach-rimmed Cayerías del Norte beyond are experiencing Cuba's most drastic contemporary tourist development.

A fantasy land of crinkled mountains and exuberant foliage, the Cuban Guantánamo remains a galaxy away from modern America in ambience. That doesn't stop most people associating it with the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which continues in operation, though downsized. Off the base, the region’s isolated valleys and wild coastal microclimates (arid in the south, lush in the north) are Cuba at its most mysterious and esoteric. Herein lie primitive musical subgenres, little-known Afro-Cuban religious rites, and echoes of an indigenous Taíno culture supposedly wiped out by the Spanish centuries ago – or so you thought.

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.

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.

On first impressions, Havana can seem like a confusing jigsaw puzzle, but work out how to put the pieces together and a beautiful picture emerges.

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.