Cuba cave diving

[phillip1]

Does anyone know of any cave diving or cave divers in Cuba?

[FW]

Does anyone know of any cave diving or cave divers in Cuba?

There is a lot of nice cave diving in Cuba. Travel restrictions on US citizens keeps most of us from going there. You might stand a better chance.

[phillip1]

are there any specific areas that you know about there? I was thinking of starting to dig around Playa Giron it seems like there are a bunch of interesting looking sinks?

[WEPIV]

There is some scuba diving to be found in Cuba, with reefs, wrecks and caves.
We were able to travel there in the mid 1990s flying from Toronto to Varadero. At the time, these were weekly flights and there was no problem whatsoever for US citizens to do this. (Just not doing it officially.)
We were journalists at the time so I told the US we were going there as photojournalists and we told the Cuban authorities we were there for vacation. (This was true as we were vacationing photojournalists.)
We had no problems crossing the US border in upstate New York and I even got my US passport stamped when entering Cuba. (I would assume that things have been made much tighter since 9-11 though.)
We found the water and beaches down there to be equivalent to other Caribbean islands, and although we did not dive we snorkeled.
I did hear of a sink near Varadero Beach as well as other caves. I've also heard that the dive gear is somewhat out of date and I wouldn't expect any nitrox of helium unless things have changed.
There have been a lot of European (and Canadian) tourists traveling there for years so there's not really a reason why there can't be a somewhat modern dive facility down there.
It should be interesting when the politics change and it opens up to the US again....
I just looked up this link and found the cave near Varadero:

http://www.cuba-diving.de/DIVE-CUBA/...e_saturno.html

[phillip1]

cool thanks for the info.

[bahamaben]

Kate Lewis organised a training trip to Cuba around 2000. She volunteered her time to train those Cubans who were already cave diving, and organised a gear donation drive to try to make sure they at least had access to some modern equipment.
The caves sound great but I never got over there myself. I could look into getting some contact info if you're interested.

[WEPIV]

I was going to mention something else with my previous post but didn't get to it.
Besides US citizens getting to Cuba "covertly" from another country we can also travel there legitimately by (as I recall) declaring your trip to be educational, science, religious or artistic. (For example I know some documentary film makers were able to travel there.)
And there used to be a weekly flight out of Miami -- but again this was years ago.
But, for sure I can say where there's a will...there's a way!

[CaverCraig]

It would be really interesting if the NSS CDS did a issue featuring the caves of cuba!!

[FW]

It would be really interesting if the NSS CDS did a issue featuring the caves of cuba!!

We would be glad to include one, if someone went over, and wrote one!
At one time, a member had a scientific permit to dive there. I will try to bug them into writing something. but it will be pretty dated. Mike Bruic, the former owner of Madison Blue, was planning on setting up a tourist guide system in Cuba, but I never heard if he followed through.

[phillip1]

We are planning a trip there in March and I could write something if it turns out to be cool, looks like there are a bunch of caves in two regions mainly and most of them seem to have water from what I can gather.