Cuba

Cuba exists in its own tense, somewhere between past and present, and travelling there feels like being let in on something. Havana leads with faded grandeur: 1950s Chevrolets gliding past crumbling baroque facades, waves detonating over the Malecón at sunset, son music pouring out of every second doorway. Ride the classic cars, yes, but go deeper: private paladar restaurants in family living rooms, cigar farms in the emerald Viñales valley where farmers roll your smoke from leaves dried in the next barn, and Trinidad's cobbled streets frozen perfectly in 1850. The beaches, when you are ready, are proper Caribbean: Varadero's long white arc or the untouched cays offshore. Cuba is complicated, captivating and utterly its own. Go with curiosity and it repays you in stories.