The CubaAtlas Interactive Map, Layer by Layer

The map is not a static image. It is a stack of data layers you switch on and off, each drawn from open geographic data and curated references. Turn on a single layer to study one theme, or combine several to plan a real journey — beaches plus hotels plus car rental, say, for a coastal week. The layers are the whole idea: they let you ask the map a specific question instead of scrolling an endless list.

Every layer shares the same behaviour. Zoom out and nearby points cluster into a single numbered circle; zoom in and those clusters break apart into individual places you can click. Each marker opens a detail panel with what the atlas knows about that place, and every themed layer also has its own guide page you can read first. The principle behind the whole site is simple: the map is the destination, and every path across the atlas ends on a real point you can see in context.

Markers are colour- and icon-coded by layer, so a beach never looks like a hotel and an airport never looks like a restaurant. When you click one, the panel shows the place name, its category, its province and — where the atlas has it — a short description and a photograph. From there you can open the full place page or use the coordinates to plan a route.

Because the same place can belong to more than one theme, turning on several layers at once reveals relationships you would otherwise miss: the hotels strung along a particular beach, the restaurants clustered around a colonial plaza, the car-rental office sitting right next to an airport. That overlap is exactly what trip planning needs.

The Beaches layer plots Cuba's white-sand coasts, cays and bays province by province — from the long resort strand of Varadero to the remote southern cays reached only by causeway or boat. The National Parks layer covers protected areas, reserves and natural landmarks, from the Zapata wetlands in the south to the Sierra Maestra in the east and the limestone valleys of Viñales in the west. Together they form the outdoors half of the atlas.

For travellers who arrive or explore by water, the Marinas layer shows yacht harbours and the marinas that double as official ports of entry, while the Ports layer covers wider maritime access. Finer-grained layers such as Wildlife and Churches add points of interest for people who want depth beyond the headline sights, and the Cities layer maps every city and town so you always have your bearings.

On top of the cities sit the service layers, the ones most trips actually run on: Hotels and casas particulares, Restaurants and paladares, Car rental offices and Things to do. These are not abstract listings — each is plotted where it really is, so you can judge a base by what surrounds it before you commit a single night. Stack Hotels over Restaurants over a beach and you can see, at a glance, whether a place has everything within walking distance or nothing at all.

The Essentials layer is the practical backbone: pharmacies, clinics, fuel stations and banks. It is the layer you switch on once you are on the ground and need the nearest useful thing rather than the next beautiful one — the difference between a good map and a map that actually helps you when plans change.

Movement is covered by the Airports and Ports layers. Every civil airport is on the map, with the ones that carry scheduled service surfaced first, so you can pick the gateway closest to where you are actually going instead of defaulting to Havana. Combined with the Car rental layer, they answer the how-do-I-move question in a single view, and because Cuba is more than 1,200 kilometres long, that question shapes the whole trip.

The Weather & Storms layer is live. It carries current conditions for the main cities and, during the Atlantic hurricane season from June to November, tropical-storm and hurricane tracks drawn from official forecast data. That means the same map you plan your beach week with also warns you when the weather has other ideas — planning and safety in one place rather than scattered across separate apps.

The layers draw on open geographic data, principally OpenStreetMap, combined with curated references for each category and live feeds for weather and storms. Open data is what lets the atlas stay broad and neutral: it is a non-commercial, apolitical reference, not a booking engine, so nothing on the map is there because someone paid to place it. Where a description or photograph comes from a source that asks for credit, the atlas shows the attribution.

It also means the map keeps improving as the underlying data does. New places, corrected coordinates and fresh photographs flow in without the map itself changing shape — the layers are the same; the detail behind them deepens over time.

The fastest way to use the atlas is to work backwards from where you'll sleep. Open the Hotels layer, find a base, then turn on Beaches, Restaurants and Things to do around it to see what a week there would actually look like. Add Car rental and Airports to work out how you'll arrive and move, and check the Weather layer for the season. Every layer links to a guide if you want to read before you plot.

When you are ready, each place page and each layer opens directly in the live map, centred and zoomed, so there is never a dead end. Start with the layer hub to see everything the map can show, then dive into whichever theme matches your trip.