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in the former house of musical sage–turned–international icon, Francisco Repilado the man responsible for writing the immortal song ‘Chan Chan,’ which you’ve probably already heard at least a dozen times since your plane landed. Born in a small shack on this site in 1907, Compay Segundo, as he was more commonly known, shot to superstardom at the advanced age of 90 as the guitarist and winking joker in Ry Cooder’s Buena Vista Social Club. Despite predictions that he would make 115, Segundo died in 2003 aged 95. La Rueda is Siboney’s only real dining option and would have kept old Francisco happy with its no-frills comida criolla, friendly service and good beach views.

A number of cheap peso food stalls overlook the beach. There is also an open-air bar selling drinks in Convertibles on the beach itself.

Getting There & Away

Bus 214 runs to Siboney from near Av de los Libertadores 425, opposite Empresa Universal, with a second stop at Av de Céspedes 110 in Santiago de Cuba. It leaves about once an hour, and bus 407 carries on to Juraguá three times a day. Passenger trucks also shuttle between Santiago de Cuba and Siboney.

A taxi to Playa Siboney will cost in the vicinity of CUC$20 to CUC$25, depending on whether it’s state or private.

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LA GRAN PIEDRA

Crowned by a 63,000-tonne boulder that perches like a grounded asteroid high above the Caribbean Sea, the Cordillera de la Gran Piedra forms part of Cuba’s oddest, greenest and most bio-diverse mountain range. Not only does the range have a refreshingly cool microclimate, it also boasts an incredibly unique historical heritage based on the legacy of some 60 or more coffee plantations set up by French farmers in the latter part of the 18th century. On the run from a bloody slave rebellion in Haiti in 1791, the enterprising Gallic immigrants overcame arduous living conditions and difficult terrain to turn Cuba into the world’s number-one coffee producer by the early 19th century. Their workmanship and ingenuity have been preserved for posterity in a Unesco World Heritage Site that is centered on the Cafetal La Isabelica. The area is also included in the Baconao Unesco Biosphere Reserve, instituted in 1987.

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CAFETALES

The Cubans have always been enthusiastic coffee drinkers. But, while the shade-loving national coffee crop thrives in the cool tree-covered glades of the Sierra del Escambray and Sierra Maestra, it’s not indigenous to the island.

Coffee was first introduced into Cuba in 1748 from the neighboring colony of Santo Domingo, yet it wasn’t until the arrival of French planters from Haiti in the early 1800s that the crop was grown commercially.

On the run from Toussaint Louverture’s slave revolution, the displaced French found solace in the mountains of Pinar del Río and the Sierra Maestra, where they switched from sugarcane production to the more profitable and durable coffee plant.

Constructed in 1801 in what is now the Sierra del Rosario Reserve in Pinar del Río province, the Cafetal Buenavista was the first major coffee plantation in the New World. Not long afterward, planters living in the heavily forested hills around La Gran Piedra began constructing a network of more than 60 cafetales (coffee farms) using pioneering agricultural techniques to overcome the difficult terrain. Their stoic efforts paid off and, by the second decade of the 19th century, Cuba’s nascent coffee industry was thriving.

Buoyed by high world coffee prices and aided by sophisticated new growing techniques, the coffee boom lasted from 1800 to about 1820, when the crop consumed more land than sugarcane. At its peak, there were more than 2000 cafetales in Cuba, concentrated primarily in the Sierra de Rosario region and the Sierra Maestra to the east of Santiago de Cuba.

Production began to slump in the 1840s with competition from vigorous new economies (most notably Brazil) and a string of devastating hurricanes. The industry took another hit during the War of Independence, though the crop survived and is still harvested to this day on