Cuba - Lonely Planet [176]
Getting Around
The 1950s-style Essto station, 1.5km west of the Hotel Moka access road, is one of Cuba’s quirkiest gas stations. Fill up here before heading east to Havana or west to Pinar del Río. Most excursions organize transport. Otherwise you’ll have to rely on hire car, taxi or your own two feet to get around.
Return to beginning of chapter
Matanzas Province
* * *
NORTHERN MATANZAS
MATANZAS
VARADERO
CÁRDENAS
PENÍNSULA DE ZAPATA
CENTRAL AUSTRALIA & AROUND
BOCA DE GUAMÁ
GRAN PARQUE NATURAL MONTEMAR
PLAYA LARGA
PLAYA GIRÓN
* * *
For a province whose name means ‘massacres,’ Matanzas presents a surprisingly innocuous face. It hasn’t always been this way. In the 17th and 18th centuries pillaging pirates ravaged the region’s prized north coast, burning property and terrorizing the early Spanish settlers. Two hundred years later, in April 1961, another group of political mercenaries grappled ashore in the Bay of Pigs under the dreamy notion that they had arrived to liberate the nation.
The province’s dreams these days are made in Varadero, the Caribbean’s largest beach resort, a skillfully manufactured modern Xanadu, which stretches for 20 idyllic kilometers along the sandy Hicacos Peninsula and provides a comfortable tropical haven for tourists from all over the globe.
But Matanzas’ Cuban soul lies not here, but some 32km to the west in its eponymous provincial capital, a down-at-heel port city that few visitors see and fewer still appreciate. While glitzy Varadero has spawned high-rise hotels, all-inclusive vacation deals and tandem-skydiving packages, the city of Matanzas has sculpted more subtle creations, giving the world rumba and danzón (traditional Cuban ballroom dance) and harboring some of its most grandiose neoclassical buildings.
Traditionally a bastion of the sugar industry, Matanzas’ economy has diversified in recent years to include tourism and citrus production. Glimmering in the south is the largely un-inhabited Zapata Peninsula, the Caribbean’s largest swamp and a protected area that guards rare birds, crocodiles and a wide variety of different ecosystems. Shimmering nearby, the Bay of Pigs is a more peaceful retreat these days where vertical underwater drop-offs and fantastical coral walls are more popular with divers than invaders.
* * *
HIGHLIGHTS
Gritty City Unlock the buried secrets of dusty Matanzas, the ‘Athens of Cuba’
High Life Go tandem skydiving over diamond-dust Varadero beach Click here
Ecosystems Discover the amazingly varied vegetation zones in the Ciénaga de Zapata
Drop Off Discover the plunging drop-offs and colorful coral walls diving off Playa Larga (see boxed text,)
Ghost Town Kick through the ruins of San Miguel de los Baños (see boxed text,)
TELEPHONE CODE: 045
POPULATION: 675,980
AREA: 11,978 SQ KM
* * *
Parks & Reserves
Matanzas contains Cuba’s largest protected tract of land, the Gran Parque Natural Montemar, a National Park, Unesco Biosphere Reserve and Ramsar Convention Site. Within the park there are further protected areas such as the Las Salinas Wildlife Refuge. In the north of the province, three areas enjoy protected status: the region bordering the Río Canímar, the Laguna Maya Flora and Fauna Reserve by Playa Coral, and the Reserva Ecológica Varahicacos in Varadero.
Getting There & Around
Because of its position in the Havana/Varadero tourist corridor, northern Matanzas has the best transport connections in Cuba with eight buses a day plying the Vía Blanca to and from the capital. From Varadero there are direct connections to Santa Clara, Trinidad and Cienfuegos while Matanzas has good rail links with Havana and the rest of the country,