Hotel Starfish Varadero (formerly Aguas Azules and Club Amigo Varadero before that) is a middle range all-inclusive hotel in Varadero located only meters away from the shopping mall and Convention Center "Plaza América".
Its 411 rooms are distributed among the main building and 10 bungalows of 2 floors and 8 rooms each. They are pretty basic, old and shabby, and one is very likely to come across issues like: leaking air conditioners, hard matresses, insufficient water pressure and / or no hot water in the shower.
The same with the rest of the hotel; there are broken staircase railings and windows, no lighting in some areas, missing glass panels, broken elevators with exposed shafts…No doubt it’s poorly maintained.
To compensate these flaws there’s a great beach, long, wide and featuring lots of shade huts and beach chairs; 3 swimming pools that are kept very clean; well-tended grounds, and right off the lobby bar there is a very nice shady patio with plenty of chairs, even rockers for one to sit and relax with a drink under the shade of a giant tree.
The plants on this resort have had lots of time to develop and it shows beautifully. There are a lot of flowering shrubs all around the grounds. The walk to the beach is through a park with lakes and bridges, straight down from the front lobby. The lobby area itself is part of the grounds since the lobby was built around a rock wall and has lots of live plants growing throughout.
Food could definitely be better and more varied at the buffet, the two à la carte restaurants are hard to reserve...but it is also true there are many good priced restaurants and bars in town, so it's always possible to leave the hotel every or every other night for a better culinary experience.
In summary, not a fancy hotel at all but if one doesn’t want to spend a lot in accommodation and goes with low expectations one could enjoy the time there.