Last month, my friend Yarobis and a small but rapidly growing band of Cuban climbers, made another exploratory trip to Santiago de Cuba in search of more virgin rock. Shame I couldn’t be with them, I was too busy here at High Sports keeping you informed of what is going on… but there’s always a next time.
Here is a short article by Yarobis about their journey in search of hidden rock treasures, and some of their photos to help inspire your imagination to one day visit this Caribbean paradise. What a place. Enjoy!
“In the third day of pure bouldering we decided to look for a new area. The Baconao Park appeared to be our next destination as we had references (provided by the locals) of some more of those “seborucos” spread out everywhere around that area, waking up our interest to explore it and find them.
At 10:00 in the morning, the sun was already bothering us and began to itch. After a long sweaty approach, following the footpaths made by the cows along the fields and carefully moving between the gigantic cactus, they boulders start to emerge between the sharp vegetation.
Five problems were found straight away, the last one, called “El Cochero de Drácula” (Dracula’s Coachman) was unanimously the most popular. After a brief exploration of the surroundings, we found one of the best blocks, slightly hidden between the Varia plants. An extra-overhanged boulder in the form of a boat and beatifully flattened on the top, and there for quickly named Transatlantico. Two of it’s more elementary problems were tasted and a project (8a?) left us with a tremendous desire to continue trying it but our strength was running out little by little as the sun was kicking with fury over our heads. Stopping around 3 pm when the fatigue was unbearable, we decided to take our retirement concluding our short but intense “bloquero” day.
As it was the last day in Siboney, we decide to finish the afternoon in the warm waters of the beach with the same name, as a hard earned and deserved reward. The rum under the Coconut tree was tastier than ever bringing out that Caribbean flavour. The afternoon was cooling down slowly to give way to a beautiful clear night, that could not finish without continuing to work on some of the problems found the day before close to our camping spot. With the head tourches we continued the obsessive “escaladera” until past 2 am in the morning. Just in time to get some sleep before facing the next day of 14.5 hours on a train to get back to Habana.”
Yarobis.
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