Santiago de Cuba is the island's second largest city and a glittering cultural capital in its own right. Anyone with even a passing interest in Cuban literature, music, architecture, politics or ethnology should spend atleast a day or two kicking through the myriad of assorted attractions here.

Enlivened by a cosmopolitan mix of Afro-Caribbean culture and situated closer to Haiti and the Dominican Republic than Habana, Santiago's influences have tended to come as much from the east as they have from thewest, a factor that has been crucial in shaping the city's distinct individual identity. Nowhere else in Cuba will you find such a colorful combination of people, or such a resounding sense of historical destiny.

Baracoa is undoubtedly one of the island's most rewarding travel destinations.

For the first-time visitor, getting there is half the fun. From its summithigh up in the Sierra del Puril, the winding form of La Farola (the lighthouse road) snakes its way precipitously downward through a ruggedlandscape of gray granite cliffs and pine-scented cloud forest until itfalls, with eerie suddenness, upon the lush tropical paradise of the Atlantic coastline. Columbus first came here in 1492 and described it as themost beautiful land he had ever set eyes upon. Che Guevara dropped by five centuries later and opened up the area's first major industrial complex, astill-functioning chocolate factory. In fact, so remote was this mostethereal of Cuban municipalities that, until the opening of La Farola in 1964, the only way to reach it was via the sea.

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