Cuba’s famed Varadero beach getting ready for tourists again

By ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ
Associated Press

VARADERO, Cuba (AP) — Little by little, vacationers are returning to one of the Caribbean’s most iconic beaches, which has been a nearly abandoned strip of glittering sand and turquoise seas for more than a year. Varadero is slowly getting ready for Cuba’s planned Nov. 15 formal reopening to global visitors. A handful of foreign tourists have strolled across the 22-kilometer (13-mile) swath of sand in recent days, hunting out the scattering of restaurants that have reopened. The pandemic was a terrible blow to tourism in Cuba, which depends heavily on the industry, especially after a series of tighter U.S. embargo measures