Varadero: Cuba's longest Caribbean beach

Built on a narrow sand peninsula, Varadero owes its fame to roughly twenty kilometers of uninterrupted white beach, among the most celebrated in the Caribbean.

The city is long and narrow: rental bikes or shared taxis remain the most comfortable way to move around.

The long stretch of sand at Varadero Beach opens the day, with shallow and transparent waters along almost the entire peninsula.

A few minutes away, Josone Park, built around a small artificial lake, preserves the 1940s villa of a wealthy Cuban family among shaded pathways.

Heading toward the end of the peninsula you visit the Cave of Ambrosio, a cave with over forty petroglyphs left by pre-Columbian Taíno communities and small underground pools.

Toward sunset, the Xanadú Mansion, built in the 1930s by American magnate Irénée du Pont, offers from its terrace one of the most famous views of the sea of all Varadero.

The Mansión Xanadú is now part of a golf course: it happens that golfers cross the green right under the windows from which du Pont once observed the same stretch of coast.

In the underground pools of the Cueva de Ambrosio live small blind fish, adapted to the total darkness of the cave after generations isolated from sunlight.