Protruding west from the main body of Cuba, cupping the Bahía de Guacanayabo, Granma is a tranquil, slow-paced province, where the closest things get to bustling is in its appealingly low-key capital Bayamo, birthplace of the father of Cuban independence, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. Granma is nonetheless growing in popularity; the peaceful black-sand resort on the southern coast at Marea del Portillo is already a firm favourite with Canadian retirees, and you could do worse than spend a couple of days here, sampling some of the day excursions into the surrounding mountains of the Sierra Maestra or the numerous diving opportunities. A visit to the small and simple rural town of Pilón, just a few kilometres away, is a marked contrast to the all-inclusive world.

On the southwestern tip of Granma's coastline is Playa Las Coloradas, where Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries came ashore on the Granma – visiting the site is the highlight of any Revolution pilgrimage – while nearby, the Parque Nacional Desembarco del Granma has several excellent guided nature trails, including El Guafe with its three pre-Columbian petroglyphs. Up along the western coast, sleepy Manzanillo, though not somewhere you're likely to spend a lot of time, is worth visiting for the flashes of brilliant Moorish architecture that light up the town centre. There is little to draw you to the Llanura del Cauto Guacanayabo plains north of Manzanillo, mostly characterized by swampland and a few one-street towns.

The Sierra Maestra, Cuba's highest and most extensive mountain range, stretches along the southern coast of the island, running the length of both Santiago and Granma provinces. The unruly beauty of the landscape – a vision of churning seas, undulating green-gold mountains and remote sugar fields – will take your breath away. That said, once you're done admiring the countryside there's not an awful lot to do: national park status notwithstanding, much of the Sierra Maestra is periodically declared out of bounds by the authorities, sometimes supposedly because of an epidemic in the coffee crops but more often for no given reason. Should you get the opportunity to go trekking here, though, seize it.

There are some excellent trails, most notably through the stunning cloud forest of the Parque Nacional Turquino to the island's highest point, Pico Turquino, at 1974m. Although a considerable part of the Sierra Maestra falls in Santiago province, Parque Nacional Turquino included, the best chance you have to do any trekking is to base yourself in Bayamo, where you can arrange a guide and suitable transport; see "The Sierra Maestra" for more information.