6 Best Sights in Western Cuba, Cuba

Covering 35,000 square meters, this hillside botanical garden is a wild tangle of flowering vines, fragrant gingers, waist-high begonias and epiphyte-laden trees growing out of rocks. The centerpiece is a tidy greenhouse filled with blooming orchids. Back in the 1940s, a wealthy Havana lawyer and orchid fancier hired a Japanese gardener to design this glorious garden in his daughter's memory. Stone pathways bordered by plant-covered rocky outcroppings wind uphill to a lookout. The footing is a little precarious and the garden is quite wild, but beautiful. Birds abound, so be sure to bring along binoculars. The garden is also a study center for budding botanists and there is an expert guide on hand.

Installed in a fantastical Moorish palace, dripping with carved stone griffins, this museum is even more fascinating for its outlandish architecture and quaint, old-fashioned displays than for its hodgepodge, natural history collection. Built by a wealthy doctor in 1909, this private residence was known as the Guasch Palace. After the Revolution, the doctor's son "gifted" the building to the state and it was officially renamed after a self-taught, 19th-century Cuban scientist named Tranquilino Sandalio de Noda. The exhibits include dusty dioramas of desiccated stuffed specimens, from antelope to zebra, plus an array of mounted animal heads on the walls. There's a room dedicated to butterfly and moth collections, and a shell collection is displayed in showcases held up by carved seahorses. The delightful surprise here is the interior garden where, amid Art Nouveau painted floor tiles, intricately carved wooden doors and tropical plants, a giant concrete model of a demonically grinning tyrannosaurus Rex reigns.

Pay the extra to bring in your camera; there are photo ops everywhere you look.

Across the street from the museum there are two side-by-side, brightly colored restaurants competing for lunch business.

The city's main, not-to-be-missed sight is this perfectly preserved, 19th-century natural-medicine pharmacy. Established in 1882 by Ernesto Triolet and his son-in-law, Juan Fermín de Figueroa, this gorgeous emporium looks out onto the Parque de Libertad through large stained glass windows. The pharmacy closed its doors in 1964, and has been preserved exactly as it was on that day, down to the huge, ornate cash register; the log book with handwritten recipes for each prescription; the rolls of brown paper to wrap the glass bottles that were individually filled and labeled; and the ceiling-high, handsome wood-and-glass cases holding hundreds of decorative porcelain jars. Guided tours take you to the distillery behind the shop, where the pharmacists manufactured their world-famous trademark syrups and tonics. Medicine bottles, embossed with the pharmacy's name, were made in Philadelphia and shipped to Cuba. Don't miss the bronze crocodile used to compress and calibrate the corks that, before the screw-top, sealed vials. The tour continues upstairs in the lavish living quarters of the owners—natural medicine was obviously a profitable business. An art gallery on the mezzanine floor showcases stained glass works—including small glass bird mobiles for sale—made by a studio that occupies the top floor.

This beautifully restored museum, housed in an elegant, colonnaded 1918 building, is worth a visit for its wide-ranging exhibits on everything from archeology to ethnology to numismatics to colonial weaponry. Perhaps most interesting is the re-creation of the original exhibition space, as it would have been presented 100 years ago, in a high-ceilinged hall with an upper, wooden gallery. Lots of natural light illuminates the quirky, Victorian-era potpourri of natural-history exhibits, from bugs, butterflies, polymitas (snails with multicolored shells), to preserved fleas in nuptial dress, viewed under a magnifying glass. Antique buttons and buckles, pen nibs, death masks, a Masonic lodge throne in the shape of a peacock—you never know what oddity you will come across. On the historical side, there are the usual photographs of Cárdenas heroes of the wars of independence and the Revolution and a gruesome reminder of the risks rebels took, in the form of the garotte used to strangle victims to death. The museum has a beautiful, bright inner courtyard displaying some lovely, early 19th-century furniture, as well as an ornate horse-drawn hearse.

Bird-watchers from all over the world flock to this national park in hopes of feasting their eyes on some 190 bird species, including 21 endemic species. Even if you're not a passionate birder, you can still enjoy watching a mass of wading birds—flamingos, wood storks, sandhill cranes—feeding here. The park forms about half of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that also includes the Las Salinas Wildlife Sanctuary. The combined reserve covers 4,520 sq km (1,641 sq miles) encompassing mangroves, cactus, dry woods, savannahs, salt pans and forest, providing habitat for reptiles, mammals, and all those birds. It's a mecca for fly-fishermen and hikers, as well. Bird-watching platforms on the way out to Las Salinas offer a chance to see some of the endemic species, such as the eponymous Zapata Rail and Zapata Wren, along with the red, white, and blue tocororo—Cuba's national bird and the zunzuncito (Bee Hummingbird), the smallest bird in the world. The main access to the park is via Playa Larga at the head of the Bahía de los Cochinos. Check in at the park office in Playa Largo a day before you plan to visit the vast park, to plan which area you want to explore, pay your entrance fee (CUC$10), and make arrangements for hiring a guide (CUC$10).