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Cafetal La Isabelica

The hub of the Unesco World Heritage site bestowed in 2000 upon the First Coffee Plantations in the Southeast of Cuba is this impressive two-story stone mansion, with its three large coffee-drying platforms, built in the early 19th century by French émigrés from Haiti. It's a 2km hike beyond La Gran Piedra on a rough road.

The complex includes a workshop filled with period tools, the sobering quarters of enslaved people and antique coffee-processing machinery. If available, it's well worth using a guide (be sure to tip) to show you around as there are no explanatory signs. There were once more than 60 such cafetales in the area.

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