Guarapo, the Cuban cocktail made from sugar cane

Not everything is rum in Cuba. You can drink other typical island drinks, some with and others without alcohol. For example, if you are lying in the sun on the famous beaches of Varadero, you can order a refreshing, sweet and tasty cocktail: the gaurapo. The Gaurapo it is the juice of the sugar cane so diabetics should abstain as it has a lot of sugars. Calories too, but we're on vacation. Cubans consume it cold, with slush ice, and it is sold at stalls known as guaraperas.

There are guaraperas all over Cuba and in them you will see the sugar mills, the machines that are used to extract the juice from the sugar cane at the moment: metal rollers with grooves that rotate and through which the cane passes and is squeezed. Guarapo is deeply embedded in Cuban popular culture and due to its own characteristics it has not been bottled, so it is always drunk fresh, freshly squeezed. If you want you can add some rum, of course.