The Horizontes Villa Guama Hotel is the most special place we stayed at £32 for room breakfast and dinner for two per night. Fidel Castro had the original idea for this hotel and Indian settlement recreation and it was his favourite places to relax amongst the numerous birds, crocodiles and other wild life. The hotel is set next to a reconstructed Taino Indian village, accessed across a large lake in mangrove swamps. The wooden huts covered in palm leaves feel like ship cabins, but are air conditioned with new bathrooms and small lounges and fridges. Keep your luggage closed as there are cockroaches and use lots of mossy spray.
Until they replace the bridge later in 2008 that fell down in a storm in 2004, you are ferried back and forward to the restaurant and main island by rowing boat. Alexe, our boatman was very useful for booking bass fishing and early morning bird watching trips and just sorting out problems such as leaking bathrooms.
We must have seen over 200 varieties of birds from Ospreys and Pelicans down to humming birds. We were told that the crocodiles only visited in April and May to eat birds' eggs, but the large splash one night was repeated when we came out for dinner one evening. As we left, we noticed a well worn slide on the bank 5 metres from our cabin, which I would have liked to inspect in more detail.
The food offered was fairly simple, but included lobster and crocodile, the latter being of eel like consistency with a pleasant mild flavour. Breakfast was a predictably boring omelette each morning, with stale bread and mango jam. The main restaurant burnt down in 2005, so things might improve if that is rebuilt. The remains were fed to the shoal of large cat fish below. The setting, trees and water are beautiful but the whole construction needed more maintenance, for example simply to knock down proud nails in walkways and in broken guard rails. The pool area was a real mixture, with the pool excellently maintained by Alexy, but with a wooden surround that could not safely be used by children. This would be a good retirement project for its founder, Fidel. Book through Cubanacan's website and stay for 2-3 nights, less being a waste of time and after 3 nights you would want different food.