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of the golden sands of Playa Jibacoa. Switch west next along the beautiful (and deserted) northern coast route to Puerto Esperanza for a few days of turning off, tuning in and dropping out before pressing on to Sandino, within striking distance of María la Gorda. The Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) area is awash with decent casas particulares, none better than those found on shimmering Playa Larga, and you can easily work your way along the coast from here to Rancho Luna and La Boca, where assorted private houses offer up an ideal antidote to the tourist hotels of Cienfuegos and Trinidad. The long road east presents ample opportunities to avoid the city hustlers in Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey. Check out unsung Florida with its archetypal sugar mills, or bustling Guáimaro with its groundbreaking constitutional history. Turn left in Las Tunas and detour to the remote northern beach ‘resort’ of Playa Las Bocas, where you’ll see no one but a handful of ingratiating casa particular owners. Homing in on Holguín province, check out the pretty town of Banes as a launching pad for Guardalavaca before making one last fling down to Santiago de Cuba, where peace and tranquility await you in sleepy Siboney.

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These little-known towns and villages have two things in common: a handful of legal casas particulares and a dearth of regular visitors. If you don’t mind roughing it on local transport, conversing in barely intelligible Spanish or reading your Lonely Planet by torchlight, read on.

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THE MUSICAL TOUR Two Weeks to One Month / Havana to Baracoa

Ease in gently at Havana’s Iglesia de San Francisco de Asís, where refined classical music echoes eerily through the cloisters of a converted 18th-century church. Next shimmy a couple of blocks west to Mesón de la Flota, where rasping vocals and furious flamenco invites listeners to discover the elusive spirit of what aficionados call duende (a term used in flamenco to describe the ultimate climax to the music). For something more authentically Cuban, visit Havana’s Casa de la Música in El Centro, or forge your way west to venerable Viñales, home of the guajira (a type of flamenco) and location of the spanking new Centro Cultural Polo Montañez. In unsung Matanzas, live rumba performances reverberate in Plaza de la Vigía Click here while, an hour or two further on, in Santa Clara’s Club Mejunje, loose rhythms and heavy bass mix in one of Cuba’s most vibrant and underrated cultural institutions. Trinidad has trova (traditional poetic singing) and son (Cuba’s popular music) and a lot more besides in Palenque de los Congos Reales, while the long journey east to Santiago’s spit-and-sawdust Casa de las Tradiciones is a musical homecoming, akin to sailing down the Mississippi to New Orleans. With the hangover starting to bite, tie in Haitian drums and voodoo rhythms in Guantánamo’s Tumba Francesa Pompadour before heading over the Sierra Puril Mountains for the grand finale: a frenetic all-out Cuban knees-up at the amiable Casa de la Trova in Baracoa.

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Cuban music is famous the world over, but to break free of the Buena Vista Social Club ditties that have become the staple diet in Cuban restaurants, you have to wander off the beaten track. This compact itinerary details some of Cuba’s eclectic music venues.

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TAILORED TRIPS

BOOK TOUR

Start off in Havana in the Hotel Sevilla, which Graham Green borrowed as a setting in his comedic novel Our Man in Havana. Head east next through Centro Habana, the seedy, mildewed quarter disturbingly brought to life by ‘dirty realist’ author Pedro Juan Gutiérrez in Dirty Havana Trilogy. Stop at the Monumento a las Víctimas del Maine to recall the historical events chronicled so eloquently by Elmore Leonard in Cuba Libre. Don’t leave town without first calling in at Uneac and La Casa de las Américas, where bookish intellectuals trade tall stories. Take a beach break next on Cayo Guillermo, a fishing key to which Hemingway paid homage in Islands in the