Cuba - Lonely Planet [186]
Everything east of the small stone water tower (it looks like an old Spanish fort, but was actually built in the 1930s), next to the Restaurant Mesón del Quijote, once belonged to the Dupont family. Here the millionaire American entrepreneur Irenée built the three-story Mansión Xanadu (see boxed text,), now a B&B that sits abreast Varadero’s 18-hole golf course, with a restaurant downstairs and a bar on the top floor – a choice spot for sunset cocktails. On the other side of Meliá Las Américas is the Plaza América (Map; btwn Meliá Las Américas & Varadero), Varadero’s (and Cuba’s) only real shopping mall.
Beyond Marina Chapelín, Varadero sprawls east like a displaced North American suburb with scrubby mangroves interspersed with megahotel complexes and the odd iron crane. The much hyped Delfinario (Map; 66-80-31; admission CUC$10, camera CUC$5, video camera CUC$10; 9am-5pm) gets mixed reviews. Dolphin shows happen here daily in a natural pool and swimming with the friendly aquatic mammals costs a steep CUC$65. You’re allowed to grab the dolphin’s fin and let it drag you around. Ride of a lifetime or cruel aqua-zoo? You decide.
East on Autopista Sur and 500m beyond the Club Amigo Varadero you’ll find the Cueva de Ambrosio (Map; admission CUC$3; 9am-4:30pm). Some 47 pre-Columbian drawings were discovered in this 300m cave in 1961. The black and red drawings feature the same concentric circles seen in similar paintings on the Isla de la Juventud, perhaps a form of solar calendar. The cave was also used as a refuge by escaped slaves.
A few hundred meters beyond the cave is the entrance to the Reserva Ecológica Varahicacos (Map; 9am-4:30pm), Varadero’s nominal green space and a wildlife reserve that’s about as ‘wild’ as New York’s Central Park. Bulldozers have been chomping away at its edges for years. There are three short trails (CUC$3, 45 minutes each), none of which are ever out of earshot of the noisy Autopista. The highlight is the Cueva de Musalmanes with 2500-year-old human remains and a giant cactus tree nicknamed El Patriarca (patriarch).
Cayo Piedras del Norte, 5km north of Playa Las Calaveras (one hour by boat), has been made into a ‘marine park’ by the deliberate sinking of an assortment of military equipment in 15m to 30m of water. The yacht Coral Negro was sunk here in 1997, followed by frigate 383 in 1998. Also scuttled for the benefit of divers and glass-bottom boat passengers are a towboat, a missile launching gunboat (with missiles intact) and an AN-24 aircraft.
At least half a dozen Varadero hotels are worthy of a visit in their own right – if you can get past the omnipresent security guards. Top favorites include ’50s retro Hotel Internacional, the art-deco Mansión Xanadu and the spectacularly modernist Meliá duo.
Activities
SCUBA DIVING & SNORKELING
While not the best location in Cuba for easily accessible diving, Varadero does have four excellent dive centers offering competitively priced immersions and courses. All of the 21 dive sites around the Hicacos Peninsula require a boat transfer of approximately one hour minimum. Highlights include reefs, caverns, pitchers and a Russian patrol boat sunk for diving purposes in 1997. The nearest shore diving is at Playa Coral 20km to the west. The centers also offer day excursions to superior sites at the Bay of Pigs in the south of the province (one/two immersions CUC$50/70, with transfer).
Varadero’s top scuba facility is the mega-friendly, multilingual Barracuda Diving Center (Map; 61-34-81; cnr Av 1 & Calle 58; 8am-6pm). Diving costs CUC$40 per dive with equipment, cave diving is CUC$60 and night diving costs CUC$50. Packages of multiple dives work out cheaper. Snorkelers