Bienvenidos a Vinales

Arrived in Cuba in late afternoon and after asking around to see if anyone was heading directly to Vinales, gave up and headed for central Havana. The city is huge, and varies a lot. The central area where I stayed is quite old and looks a bit like an unkempt Buenos Aires.

I found a casa particular to stay in – basically someone´s home where you stay in a room of your own – on the 8th floor of a building which offered great views overlooking the city, though in this area it is pretty rundown. Inside, however, most of the furniture is gorgeous solid wood – very expensive looking old colonial furniture that is probably worth more than most people here make in a year.

Being pretty beat from the previous night´s lack of sleep, I wandered around a bit at night, but hit the sack pretty early so I could catch the bus early the next day for Vinales.

After a 3 hour bus ride, I arrived in Vinales – a small town, much more relaxing in atmosphere. You can wander around Vinales easily by foot, (and can walk to a vast array of climbs in the area). Again, most people here stay with local families who provide room and board at a reasonable price – also offering you the opportunity to brush up a bit on your Spanish. There is one casa in particular which is recommended for climbers – Ryan has a large section booked for the two of us with two separate bedrooms and a kitchenette (which they also use to prepare our food). When I arrived a couple of climbers had just left and another couple was leaving the following day. Strangely, however, after 3 days, we haven´t seen another climber in sight. There is one other foreign climber in town that we know of, but otherwise there is only us. This makes for easy access to climbs, but is a bit of a shame on the social side, and I was hoping to run into a bit of a climbers community in the area.

On our first day of climbing, we started out with a couple of moderate climbs inside a cave. The walls of the cave are about 3 or 4 metres apart and rise 25-30 metres, opening up to the sky. Upon reaching the top of the climbs, you are greeted by a cool breeze and bright sunshine – very nice. After this we tackled a tougher climb outside the cave – a long 30 metre slightly overhanging route called Ana Banana (11b). It has a great mixture of thin pockets, edges, and a couple of sharp crack jams (luckily only a couple). I managed to lead this cleanly, though was greeted with a downpour two thirds of the way to the top. After this, we tried a couple more before attempting a short 12a that may have had a few holds come off – it was an incredibly fingery climb with a crux at a slight overhang where you had to dyno from a couple of sharp two finger huecos to a sharp nubbin the size of 4 stacked nickels. From there an incredibly balancy section in which you try to grip onto what resembles a sharply textured stucco wall.

The following day we managed a couple of multi-pitch routes which offered commanding views of the farms below from 30 stores up a steep vertical cliff face. Looking down we could see hawks (or are they vultures) circling in the thermals below us.

Today we will be exploring another cave with a mixture of moderate and difficult routes. My fingers are starting to get pretty sore already.