Provincia de Matanzas, Cuba — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Provincia de Matanzas known for?

Matanzas Province is known first for Varadero, the resort town inside its borders, and then for Cárdenas, Colón and Jovellanos, which are working towns rather than places built for visitors. The capital shares the province's name. Spanish runs the whole province, resort included.

Where is Provincia de Matanzas?

Matanzas Province spreads across a tropical stretch of Cuba, and the names on its map divide neatly enough: Varadero on the visitor side, Cárdenas, Colón and Jovellanos on the working side, with the capital of Matanzas keeping the administration. The towns lie far apart. Moving from one of those towns to another is a matter of hours on the road rather than a walk across a district, and that is the first thing worth fixing in a plan.

A single day rarely takes in both Varadero and more than one of the towns. Provincia de Matanzas belongs to the same provincial grouping as Artemisa, Mayabeque, Havana province, Isla de la Juventud and Pinar del Río, which is the company it keeps on the map of Cuba. The grouping is administrative, not scenic.

Wet months and dry months are the seasons that count. Temperature changes little, so a run between Varadero and Colón is planned around rain rather than around any calendar of warm and cold halves. Spanish covers the province.

Matanzas Province reads as two places at once, a resort province and a province of towns, and both readings are correct.

What is Provincia de Matanzas like?

Two rhythms share the province. Varadero runs on the arrivals and departures of visitors, while Cárdenas, Colón and Jovellanos keep the ordinary week of Cuban towns, and the gap between those two experiences is the most interesting thing about travelling here. Spanish is common to both.

A traveller who sees only the resort has seen one of the province's two faces. The province holds both without resolving them. The capital holds the middle ground.

Matanzas gives Matanzas Province its name and its administration, and a day spent there falls between the resort and the working towns without belonging entirely to either. Nothing in the towns is arranged for arrival. Cárdenas, Colón and Jovellanos go further in that direction, with their own markets, their own routines and very little reshaped for visitors, which is exactly why some travellers prefer them to Varadero.

Patience opens more doors than a schedule. Asking in Spanish, in a town rather than at a resort desk, changes the answers a visitor gets. Names from the province's list of towns turn up in conversation more often than any attraction does.

What is the history of Provincia de Matanzas?

Names first. Matanzas Province takes its title from the capital of the same name, and the province's record is largely the record of its towns, with Cárdenas, Colón, Jovellanos and Matanzas each counted among the major towns of the province in its own right. Varadero enters that list differently, as a resort rather than as a town of business.

The distinction still shows.

What is the climate of Provincia de Matanzas?

Wet months and dry months are the only seasons that matter. Matanzas Province sits within the tropics, so a visit is planned around rainfall rather than temperature, whether the days go to Varadero or to the road out toward Colón. Warm is the default.

Shade and an early start count for more here than the month chosen.

How do you get to Provincia de Matanzas?

Two doors into the province. Matanzas is the hub city and the administrative way in, while Varadero is the address a resort itinerary aims at, and the two are approached differently even though one province holds both. Roads link the towns.

Cárdenas, Colón and Jovellanos are reached from inside the province rather than from outside it.