Eating in the East: A Group Culinary Tour

Island Arrival: You will be taken to your accommodation in Bayamo, Granma’s provincial capital, the freshen up and settle in.

Beautiful Bayamo: Spend an hour or two exploring this picturesque town and enjoying classic Granma dishes at its best restaurant.

Exploring Sierra Maestra: We will drive to the iconic Sierra Maestra mountains to learn about the “mambises”- guerilla fighters during Cuba’s independence wars against Spain who made the Sierra Maestra both their battle background and place of refuge.

Al Fresco Cooking: Following in their footsteps, we will forage for ingredients and cook typical “mambi” dishes on an open fire and prepare cocktails that were born out of survival in this remote landscape.

Rise and Shine: Getting up early, we will immerse ourselves in the daily lives of the mountains’ campesinos (farmers.) In the morning, we will be shown around our guide’s farm and taught to make Cuban coffee the rustic way.

Mountain Trekking: Enjoy horseback riding through the area’s farms and pineapple, coffee and cacao plantations, cooling ourselves down in a nearby river.

Puerco Asado: Back at the farm, we will join the campesinos for a traditional pork roast, Cuba’s version of a family barbecue, with all the trimmings.

Farmer’s Fiesta: As the sun sets, bottles of rum and dominos will be brought out for a Cuban campesino party. Option to go back to Bayamo to sleep or camp out at the farm.

Lunch in Holguín: Leaving Granma, we will stop off for lunch in the quaint city of Holguín before arriving in Baracoa in the late afternoon.

Exploring the Town of Baracoa: We will explore the town center of Baracoa, one of the last remaining parts of Cuba that maintains its indigenous culture and known for having the best food on the island.

Cuba Goes Vegan: We will eat at an experimental and eccentric vegan restaurant which will be unlike anything you have experienced before.

Life Along the River: We will take a boat trip down the winding, wildlife-filled Yumurí to learn about Baracoa’s many rivers and how they form an essential part of local life and community. Disembarking, we will walk through the surrounding forests and discover remnants of Baracoa’s golden area of the banana boom in the 20th century and its rapid decline.

Lunch at Sea: A rustic lunch looking out at the open ocean.

All-Female Finca: We will visit a female-run cacao farm to understand the cultivation and production method that turns the crop into chocolate and the importance of cacao in Baracoan identity.

Baracoa Cooking Class: With a local expert we will prepare classic dishes from the area that make Baracoan cuisine so distinct from the rest of the island.

Sustainable Farm to Table: We will visit a permaculture farm – a form of alternative agriculture that hardly exists in Cuba. The owners will invite us to a rustic farm-to-table lunch using ingredients sourced right from the finca.

Beach time: Baracoa also has some of the island’s most beautiful and wildest beaches. We will sunbathe on the sand, swim in the shallows, drink cocktails, and chat with the locals.

Dinner: We will go to Baracoa’s best restaurant owned by the town’s best chef serving the best Baracoan ingredients with a fine dining twist (the chocolate cake is out of this world).

Baracoa Farewell: We will depart from Baracoa and drive to Santiago de Cuba, a hot Caribbean melting pot of history and influences.

Distillery Tour and Rum Tasting: The afternoon and evening will be all about rum which is synonymous with the city. Guided by a local expert, we will visit distilleries and learn about the controversial legacy of the Bacardi family that pioneered the Cuban rum industry and later fled the island. We will also have a tasting session of the rum that is produced in Santiago today followed by cocktails.

Cuba’s coffee trail: As well as rum, Santiago is famous for its former coffee empire and we will be heading to the countryside to visit some of the area’s old French cafetales (coffee plantations). One we will visit has even been transformed into a working botanical garden.

Santiago Bar Crawl: For our final night in Santiago, we will enjoy live music, cocktails, and food at some of Santiago’s best spots.

Welcome to Camagüey: Camagüey is an elegant city boasting cultural academies, artisan workshops, art galleries, and really good food! We will take a tour around the city and stop off at the best eating and drinking spots.

A Final Culinary Surprise: We will drive just outside of the city to an eco-finca with a level of luxury rare to find outside of Havana. We will help out in the greenhouses, do some fruit picking, lounge by the pool, and finish with a very special farewell dinner and drinks in their stylish outdoor restaurant.