The island of Cayo Santa Maria, Cuba has an area of 13 km²or 8 miles², one of the smallest in the Jardines del Rey Archipelago is under jurisdiction of the Villa Clara Province. Jardines del Rey are part of a collection of various islands on the north coast of Cuba.

Cayo Santa Maria is 60km from Cuba’s north coast city of Caibarien and getting to the island is via a causeway called the pedraplen. The journey takes about 50 minutes by car. On the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, the entire archipelago where Cayo Santa Maria is situated includes +2,500 keys and islets straddling the four provinces of Villa Clara, Matanzas, Ciego de Avila and Camaguey.

The first tourist development on the Jardines Del Rey Islands began in the 1990s, on Cayo Guillermo, with the inauguration in 1992 of the Club Villa Cojimar Hotel (now the Hotel Allegro), next came Cayo Coco a year later with the Hotel Guitart Cayo Coco (now the Hotel Colonial).

Since there were no commercial airports on the islands in the 1990s, the Cuban tourism authorities resorted to using the Maximo Gomez airport located in the provincial capital of Ciego de Avila and later built the Las Brujas Airport (BWW) which now serves Cayo Santa Maria. The construction of the pedraplen causeway from the mainland began in 1988 and was completed 10 years later in 1998, its 48kms (29 miles) length connecting Cayo Santa, with it began the explosion of tourism on the latest tourism destination of the King’s Gardens. A 38 kilometers causeway was later constructed to connect Cayo Santa Maria with Cayo Las Brujas.

Cayo Santa Maria is 395 Km (245 miles) from Havana. Varadero is 315 km (195 miles) from Cayo Santa Maria, whereas the closest cities to Cayo Santa Maria are Caibarien (population of 38,200) at 60km (37 miles) and Remedios (population of 46,500) at 68 km (42 miles). The biggest major city is of course Santa Clara (population of 220,000) 115 km (71 Miles).

The United States of America is not far from Cayo Santa Maria, with Miami Florida at just 288 miles (464 kilometers) by flight from Cayo Santa Maria in Jardines del Rey Cuba.

Though there are no direct flights, to get an idea of just how close Cayo Santa Maria in Cuba is to The Turks and Caicos, the JAGS McCartney International Airport (GDT) in the Turks and Caicos Islands is just 804 km (499 miles) from the Las Brujas Airport (BWW) in Cuba.