Cayo Santa Maria

A Resort Key On The Northern Archipelago Reached By A Forty Eight Kilometre Causeway From Caibarien, With Around Fifteen All Inclusive Hotels And No Permanent Population · Caibarien, Villa Clara

North of Villa Clara a causeway runs forty-eight kilometres out across a shallow bay - longer than the one to Cayo Coco and just as controversial for what it does to the water behind it - and ends on a chain of keys with around fifteen all-inclusive hotels and no permanent population at all. The beaches are the point and they are genuinely excellent: pale, fine sand, shallow turquoise water and a reef offshore, with long stretches between the hotels where there is nobody. What surrounds them is entirely constructed. Two shopping and entertainment villages on the key are built to look colonial and are not; the nearest real town, Caibarien, is an hour back down the causeway and is a working fishing port that most guests never see. Flamingos feed in the lagoons on either side of the drive out, standing in shallow pink ranks against the causeway, and for a good many guests that half hour turns out to be the most memorable part of the week.

Cayo Santa Maria, Jardines del Rey, Villa Clara, Caibarien, Villa Clara, Cuba

The causeway is open day and night with a toll and a checkpoint. Resorts run all year. The purpose-built shopping villages, the marina and the excursions keep daytime and evening hours. Large resorts run generators and are largely insulated from the power cuts that affect the mainland an hour away.

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