Baracoa

Feast your eyes upon deep green foliage that's wonderfully abundant after the stark aridity of Guantánamo’s south coast. Delve into fantastical legends, and acquaint yourself with an unorthodox cast of local characters. There’s Cayamba, the self-styled ‘Guerrilla troubadour’ who once claimed he was ‘the man with the ugliest voice in the world;’ La Rusa, an aristocratic Russian émigré who inspired a novel by magic-realist author Alejo Carpentier; and Enriqueta Faber, a French woman who passed herself off as a man to practice as a doctor and marry a local heiress in Baracoa’s cathedral in 1819 – likely Cuba’s first same-sex marriage. Baracoa – what would Cuba be without you?

While 2016's Hurricane Matthew hit Baracoa hard, the town is already on the rebound.

---

Read Less