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flatlands, the Loma de Cunagua (admission CUC$5; 9am-4pm), 18km east of Morón on the Carretera de Bolivia, is a protected flora and fauna reserve that harbors a ranchón-style restaurant, a small network of trails, and excellent bird-watching opportunities. Turn left off the main road at the sign, pay your fee at the gate, and proceed up the steep unpaved road to the summit. At 364m above sea level, the Loma is the province’s highest point and the views over land and ocean are excellent. You can arrange horseback riding here or stroll along short bushy trails in search of tocororos, zunzúns and plenty more. The restaurant whips up a decent all-in pork lunch for CUC$10 and a couple of cabins (r CUC$30) offer rustic overnight accommodation for those in search of some rural tranquility.

Isla Turiguano

In rodeo-land Cuba is right up there with the Calgary Stampede, and one of the island’s best cattle-fests can be seen at Isla Turiguano on the road out of Morón, a kilometer or two before the Cayo Coco checkpoint. Cowboys, bulls, horses and lassos are in evidence every weekend at around 2pm for exciting 90‑minute espectáculos (shows). Alternatively you can drop by for a look at the animals any time. There’s a small bar out front.

EL PUEBLO HOLANDéS

El Pueblo Holandés, a small community with 49 red-roofed, Dutch-style dwellings, is on a hill next to the highway, 4km north of La Redonda. It was built by Celia Sánchez in 1960 as a home for area cattle workers. It’s an interesting blip on the landscape, but not worth a detour.

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FLORENCIA

Ringed by gentle hills, the town of Florencia, 40km west of Morón, was named after Florence in Italy by early settlers who claimed that the surrounding countryside reminded them of Tuscany. The town itself grew up around the Santa Clara–Nuevitas railway in the 1920s when local farmers began transporting their products to more lucrative markets in the west. In the early 1990s the Cuban government constructed a hydroelectric dam, the Liberación de Florencia, on the Río Chambas and the resulting lake has become a recreational magnet for nature lovers. There are a number of activities available here, including horseback riding through the Florencia hills, kayaking, aqua-biking, and a boat ride on the lake to a tiny key called La Presa with a restaurant and small animal ‘zoo.’ The nexus is a Palmares rancho called La Esquinita ( 6-9294; 9am-5pm) by the side of the lake in Florencia. You can get more details at Infotur in Ciego de Ávila Click here or at Palmares ( 50-21-12; Martí No 306) in Morón. For a place to stay you may get lucky in the lovely Campismo Boquerón, 5km west of Florencia, normally only available to Cubans but sometimes able to take in foreigners. Enquire at La Esquinita.

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CAYO COCO

Cayo Coco is Cuba’s fourth-largest island and the main tourist destination after Varadero. Situated in the Archipiélago de Sabana-Camagüey, or the Jardines del Rey, as travel brochures prefer to call it, 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.

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ASK A LOCAL

Cayo Coco actually has some good environmental credentials. Hotels can be no more than three-story in height and have to be situated a designated distance from the beach with wooden walkways built over the various lagoons. There is also controlled fishing in the area. To find out more about the island’s eco-efforts, visit Parque Natural El Bagá.

Diego, Cayo Coco

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While the beauty of the beaches on these islands is world-famous, Cayo Coco pre-1990 was little more than a mosquito-infested mangrove swamp. French corsair Jacques de Sores was one of the earliest visitors, fresh from successful raids on Havana and Puerto Príncipe, and he was followed in 1752 by the island’s first landowner, an opportunistic Spaniard named Santiago Abuero Castañeda. Between 1927 and 1955 a community of 600 people scraped a living