We had been told that Varadero was a quite horrible place, very touristic and off-limits for Cubans. We were told that it was filled with large hotels built for sun-tanning idiots who would not recognize Cuba on the world map. In fact, Varadero wasn't half bad.

Sure, its filled with hotels. Sure it's touristic. I did not see anybody or anything stopping Cubans from entering, but it may well be that I only saw the Cuban people that are originally from Varadero. Anyway, we were staying in a cheap side building to one of the All inclusive hotels (we had already done that, no need for repeats).

We went to the natural reserve beach. We had to pay some dollars to get in, but this way we practically had the beach to ourselves. Also we took a walk through the tiny forest, and looked at Cuba's oldest tree, a 500 year old Cactus. We did not meet anyone but a group of American tourists wearing "Adventure Nature Trips" baseball caps and looking like they were going into some serious bit of jungle, all dressed up in Kaki, serious hiking boots and carrying water bottles. We were wearing our beach gear of course.

We ate in All Capone's old holiday house, now a restaurant. We enjoyed it so much we even ate there the second evening! The food was very good. We had calamares, cordon bleu (made with chicken, but tasty anyway) and some lobster and the waiters were true professionals, giving excellent service. Their Mojitos were also extra nice.

We stayed in Varadero for two days, hoping we'd get some extra tan, but on the second day it rained heavily. We decided that since it was raining, we might as well drive to the Cuevas (Caves) de Bellamar over in Matanzas. These were quite hard to find. The caves are quite nice, and we really enjoyed walking down into the earth to a depth of about 30 meters. We had some fun while some other tourists (older ladies from Argentina) made funny remarks at the guides' explanations. We splashed some water on ourselves from the two famous fountains of youth and love, so we should be Okay now....

After that we drove back to Varadero. We had lunch in the Don Quijote (authentic Spanish tortilla de patata, lovely shrimp cocktail and some nice tuna salad).

We walked around in the Parque Josone for a while. During weekdays the park seems to close quite early (around 8-9-ish) so we went just before it got dark (around six or so). We were lucky enough to spot a Cuban Colibri (or was it a "Zumzun"?) feeding on the many flowers in the park. At first I thought it was a very large insect!

We had dinner at "La Casa de Al" again, because we had liked it very very much the day before.