Cuba holidays

Cuba is the Caribbean's most culturally distinctive island — Havana's UNESCO Old Town with peeling colonial mansions, 1950s American cars and Buena Vista Social Club-era son cubano music; Trinidad's cobblestone time-capsule (UNESCO, the best-preserved colonial town in Cuba); the tobacco country of Viñales with its mogote limestone hills and tobacco plantations; the long sweep of Varadero beach (the most-developed Cuban resort coast); the Afro-Cuban music heart at Santiago de Cuba (the home of son and the 26 July revolution); and the remote eastern Baracoa with its cacao plantations and Indigenous Taíno heritage. After 60+ years of US embargo Cuba feels frozen in amber yet vibrantly alive.

A 12-14 day Cuba trip: Havana (3-4 nights — the Old Town walking route, the Malecón at sunset, a son show at Buena Vista Social Club, the cigar factory tour at Partagás, the Hemingway pilgrimage to La Floridita and Cojímar) → Viñales tobacco country (2 nights — horseback tobacco-farm tours, the mogote hills, the prehistoric mural) → Trinidad (3 nights — UNESCO cobblestone old town, sugar-mill valley, day-trip to Cienfuegos' French-colonial bay) → optional Santiago de Cuba (2-3 nights) for the Afro-Cuban music heartland → beach finish at Varadero or Cayo Coco (2-3 nights all-inclusive).