Cuba’s famous Varadero beach resort has once again been included among the best beaches in the world, according to the criteria of specialists.
The Matanzas beach was ranked 48th among the 50 best in the world, according to more than 750 judges, including travel journalists, influencers, explorers, agencies, editors and the so-called Beach Ambassadors.
Varadero was escorted by the Indian Radhangar, in 47th place, and the New Zealander Piha, in 49th, reported Prensa Latina (PL) news agency.
The prize or first place went to Lucky Bay, in Australia, which has 303 sunny days a year, in addition to other attributes, such as being home to a multitude of kangaroos and having snow-white sand and turquoise waters.
It was followed by Fuente D’Argent, in the Seychelles islands, and Playa Escondida, in the Philippine archipelago.
The experts’ ruling is included in The 50 best beaches in the world 2023, a website specialized in tourist evaluations of beaches around the world.
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The experts “possess infinite wisdom about travel,” “they have traveled the world” and “they have had their feet in the sand and… they have immersed themselves in the seas,” reads the arguments of the digital niche.
Once the vote collection was completed and to validate the selection criteria, the site’s internal travel specialists analyzed and classified the results for the final lists.
The blue beach
Located about 140 kilometers east of Havana, Varadero is a land inlet (Hicacos peninsula) of just over 20 kilometers and an average width of sand strip of 22 meters.
The transparency of its waters, the different blue tones of the sea, its white and fine sand, its warm climate, its vegetation and natural landscapes, make it a highly competitive beach resort at an international level.
It has facilities for nautical activity, golf, events, and incentive trips, an attractive nightlife, and a hotel plant with more than fifty properties, which have close to 21,000 rooms.
Its administrative and market management is in the hands, for the most part, of important tour operators and foreign chains.
The companies Meliá, Iberostar and Blue Diamond lead the list, accounting for 64% of the facilities. They are followed by chains from France, Singapore, Switzerland, India, Italy and Indonesia.
Its founding as a town dates back to the end of 1887, in the middle of the Spanish colony, with the settlement of ten families in the area.
Towards the first decades of the 20th century, the pier became a place of solace for wealthy families from the nearby town of Cárdenas, in the western province of Matanzas.
In 1928, the U.S. magnate of French origin Irénée du Pont, owner of the DuPont petrochemical empire, had the Xanadú mansion built, a jewel of eclectic architecture, and an adjacent nine-hole golf course.
Tripadvisor’s top ten
Last March, Varadero was among the ten best beaches in the world in 2023, according to the Tripadvisor portal.
The famous travel website, which draws on the opinions of its millions of users, ranked the Cuban resort in ninth place on the list, dropping it from the second position captured in 2022.
Cayo Santamaría and Varadero among best 25 beaches worldwide, according to TripAdvisor
In that previous year, Varadero was only surpassed by Grace Bay Beach, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which in 2023 dropped, in turn, to fifth position.
One of the Tripadvisor users, an Argentine from the city of Córdoba who identifies himself as SergioG160, described the Cuban resort as “a paradisiacal beach with turquoise, calm and warm waters.”
“The water is so transparent you can see the fish next to you. The sand is fine and white and you can walk along it calmly,” he wrote in the opinion mailbox of the world’s leading tourist platform.
