Varadero or the cayos: choosing your Cuban beach

Varadero: the beach with a town attached

Varadero is a peninsula of sand around twenty kilometres long with a working town at its western end. That town is the deciding factor. You can walk to a restaurant that is not your hotel, buy something in a shop, or hear a band nobody booked for you. For travellers who find all-inclusive resorts confining, that matters more than the quality of the buffet.

It is also the easy option logistically: about two to two and a half hours from Havana by road, which makes a city-and-beach trip straightforward. Hotels run from simple places in the middle of town to four-star all-inclusive resorts further out along the peninsula, where the beach is broadest and the properties quietest.

Days out are easy to arrange from Varadero: a catamaran to Cayo Blanco with snorkelling and lunch on the island, or a day in Havana if the beach comes first.

Day outCayo Blanco by catamaranFull day, over 7 hours · From VaraderoFrom $150 per personSee the day

The cayos: further, quieter, more committed

Cayo Coco and Cayo Guillermo sit off the north coast of central Cuba, joined to the mainland by a long causeway across the bay. The shallows are a colour that photographs badly because nobody believes it. There is almost nothing there except the hotels and the beaches, which is precisely the point and precisely the risk.

Getting there from Havana takes most of a day by road, so the cayos work best as the main destination of a trip, or as a stop on a longer route east, rather than as a weekend add-on. Once you are there, you are on the island: there is no town to walk into and no real alternative to the hotel you chose. Choose it carefully.

All inclusive or not

On the beach, all inclusive is the normal way hotels in Cuba are sold, and the alternative is rarely much cheaper, because there are few places to eat outside the resorts, especially on the cayos. In Varadero town, a hotel with breakfast and dinners out is a real option and makes for a more varied week.

How to pick

Take Varadero if this is your first trip to Cuba, if you are travelling with children, if you want the beach section to sit neatly after Havana, or if the idea of one property for a week makes you uneasy.

Take the cayos if the beach is the reason for the trip rather than the reward at the end of it, if you want water sports, fishing or simply empty sand, and if you would rather see almost nobody for four days.

If you cannot choose, the honest answer is Varadero. It is harder to be disappointed by, and the ability to walk out of your hotel is worth more than most people expect.