Playa Paraíso

Cayo Largo del Sur lies off Cuba's southern coast, a low limestone cay about twenty-five kilometres long with no permanent civilian population. Playa Paraíso is at its western end, running into Playa Sirena around the point.

It exists purely as a tourism installation. There is no town, no local community and no road to anywhere — the island is reached by air from Havana or Varadero, and everybody on it is either a visitor or working. That makes it unusual among Cuban beaches in a specific way: the ordinary Cuban context that surrounds Varadero is simply absent here, and what remains is sand.

The beach is fine white coral sand on a shallow reef-protected shelf, with warm calm water and a very gradual slope. It faces west and the sunsets are the reason people walk down at the end of the day. Clothing-optional use is customary along Paraíso and is one of the few places in Cuba where that is so. Green and loggerhead turtles nest on the southern beaches of the cay, and a small hatchery operates. Playa Sirena, around the point, is the calmer and more sheltered of the pair and is where the day boats from the hotels land; walking between them takes about twenty minutes along the sand.

Development is a handful of hotels grouped at one end and nothing along the rest of the shore. Facilities on the beach itself are minimal — a bar, some shade — and the cay is quiet in a way that Varadero is not.

A cay reached only by air, with hotels, an airstrip and no Cuban town at all. That makes it the least representative place in the country and, for some visitors, exactly the point. The sand is excellent, the turtles nest at the southern end, and Cuba is a hundred and seventy kilometres away.