We’ve met some pretty hardcore, backpacker-Nazi types on the road who shun packaged-travel and all who would even dream of partaking. Apparently it’s a badge of honour to stay at a place costing 50¢ a night where you have to shit in a coffee tin in the corner.

Though we’re nowhere near that extreme, we’ve still always been pretty skeptical about the whole all-inclusive-resort thing. In my mind at least, 7-day packages have always fallen somewhere between processed cheese and paying someone to wipe your bum: totally artificial and unforgivably decadent.

That having been said, though, spending a week at a 4.5-star in Varadero was a total hoot, a tonic for workaday drudgery of the last few months, and a moderately guilt-free excuse for getting completely drunk before lunch.

The trick in a country like Cuba, where supplies and funding is scarce, is to pick a new hotel, even if it has fewer stars (the whole star-rating scheme is a total scam anyway). If you’re into cleanliness and functioning plumbing, a 2-year-old 4-star place will likely be a better experience than a 5-star hotel that’s been around 10 years. It’s all about upkeep. This place we were at, the Blau Varadero, had only been around 18 months or so. Everything was still spanky-new and the toilet still worked (vital). We managed to get a room high up and overlooking the ocean.

At first the worry was how we were going to spend 7 days doing nothing. Let me tell you: surprisingly easily. Here’s a rundown:

• Decide what to eat. There’s 2 buffets, a fancy restaurant, and a snack bar.
• Eat.
• Decide what to drink and where. There’s 3 different bars, not counting the beer in the fridge in our room. Here’s the travel mug I got from Ballard being put to good use. It might even have been noon already.
• Decide on either pool or white sandy beach.
• Find a free chair. (Here’s the only dicey part of the stay, and we noticed this with the German tourists that were staying there. People will get up obscenely early to reserve a shady beach chair: like 5am. Then they’ll hog the spot all day, to the point where they’ll physically stop you from sitting close to them, logging-protest-style. The more fervent ones built little chair-forts: I guess Germans are good at building walls. I kid, I kid.)
• Work on sudoku or tan, or multitask and do both simultaneously.
• Participate in or watch hotel entertainments. They employ a whole troop of unnaturally happy people to run dance classes, teach hopeless guests token Spanish phrases, etc.
• Nap.
• Eat.
• At night, watch the hotel evening show. They’ll do dance-offs or comedy nights or, on the Saturday we were there, bizarre water-ballet performances. Thankfully, the only time you’ll see male synchronized swimmers. Here’s Senor Phantom-of-the-Night romancing the ladies, complete with waterproof dickie (ahem).

  At one point in the evening, they starting having trouble with the floodlights, and one poor sod had to hold up the stand for the rest of the show. People talk about the legions of hardworking souls who make shows like this happen; apparently it only takes one guy to keep everyone from getting electrocuted. Nice.

And so, a week and many mojitos later, we were rested up, armed with blossoming sunburns and Nazma’s new salsa-dancing skills, and off to see what the country really looks like, outside of Disneyland Cuba.