Back from Cuba, will write a more detailed report later. We did 4 cave dives near Playa Larga, they were great. We also did 8 reef dives there and visited almost all divesites between Playa Larga and Giron. These dives were nice, but sadly not that much fish as there will be found in Bonaire or Curacao. But nice canyons, walls, etc. Lot of coral bleaching on the brain corals.
The divesites itselfs were not well maintained, there were in the past on every divesite stairs to get out of the water more easily, but all of them are gone. Really all. It is a very poor country, and you see this back in the divesites. But we had really great diving in the south. And of course, the reefs stay the same, but now with only a few divers. There is only 1 divecenter left, the one in Playa Larga has been gone. So there is only one in Giron left. The 'roads' to the divesites were full of grass and other plants, so are not used a lot nowadays.
We dove with a guide, but that was no problem. We could drain tanks till 20 bars, so had long dives and he was waiting if we took pictures. With tanks it is what they have, for us he had ali80's, but on the first day we also got short 12 liter steel tanks. If you needed to rent equipment, that was not that bad, so you don't have to worry about that.
There is no nitrox available. So they don't mind about getting over ndl (as we also don't mind). We also had to do the cave diving with recreational equipment, so that means it was sadly limited, but ok because of safety. But the caves we went in were 70m deep, so that means that it is even with a twinset or sidemount not doable on air without decogases. We have only seen a little part of the caves, but I liked them. In this region not that much stalactites, but clear as in Mexico, and with haloclines.
There are 4 small wrecks in the bay of pigs, we have visited them all. For a real wreckdiver quite boring, but if you are not that experienced, then they are nice.
Varadero was different. The Russian wreck was nice and colorfull, but the other 3 divesites we have been had no really good visability and the amount of fish was ok. But especially 'Aquarius' was a boring divesite. Long boatrides, more than 1 hour. Diving without guides was not a problem. We also dove Claraboyas 1 and Tiburones reef (without sharks of course). No walls seen here, only quite flat divesites. Tiburones has some 'swimthroughs'. Current was 0 on day 1 on the wreck and the next day it was horrible. So you must be lucky.
We had a great time in Cuba, especially the people are sooooo nice. But the bay of pigs is better for diving than Varadero.