In 1998, Armando Menocal, an attorney and mountain guide from Jackson, Wyoming, went to Cuba to reconnect with his roots. Menocal’s mother was born in Cuba, and his grandfather’s cousin was president of the Caribbean nation from 1913 through 1920. But Menocal hadn’t set foot on the island since his childhood, before Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

It wasn’t meant to be a climbing trip, but Menocal—the founder of the Access Fund, a nonprofit that fights to keep the crags open in the US—nevertheless found himself gravitating toward the vertical. He had read about a place called Viñales in Pinar del Rio, described in his guidebook as a kind of mini-Yosemite. “I’d been climbing in Yosemite for 25 years,” says Menocal, now 64, “so of course I was intrigued. I had to see the place for myself.”

Map Illustration by Dushan Milic

What he saw stunned him. Out of the red earth rose limestone monoliths called mogotes towering 1,000 feet above the
surrounding palm trees and tobacco fields. Menocal bushwhacked his way to the base of the largest face and scouted the rock. It was exotic stuff—hung with stalactites and tufa columns and pitted with caves—that was more like Thailand’s famed limestone than Yosemite’s granite.

Most remarkable of all, no one in the climbing world seemed to know about these mysterious crags. At a time when it seemed that every break had been surfed, every river run and every crag poached
and picked over, here was virgin rock waiting to be explored—and perhaps the next great adventure travel destination, just a short hop from Miami.

The Cuban Tourism Revolution

Few countries have undergone a tourism transformation to match Cuba’s. In the freewheeling years after World War II, the island was the Caribbean’s leading tourist destination. In Havana, well-heeled gringos haunted the casinos and nightclubs, sipping daiquiris along the Malecón, the city’s stylish waterfront. But after Castro’s communist revolution and subsequent US trade restrictions, tourists, especially Americans, moved on to places like Puerto Rico, The Bahamas and Costa Rica.

Burdened by dictatorship, the country became more and more isolated. In 1990, the tourist industry accounted for a paltry 6 percent of Cuba’s gross revenues, while sugar exports made up more than 70 percent. But everything changed with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the early 90s. The Soviet sugar subsidies that had kept the island running for so long suddenly ran dry, and Cuba, desperate for hard currency, turned to tourism—with spectacular results.

Holy mogotes! Viñales’ limestone rivals the best routes in Thailand. Photograph by Armando Menocal

Today, visitors to Cuba supply almost 50 percent of the country’s foreign exchange, and the Cuban Ministry of Tourism, which didn’t even exist until 1994, expects 2.5 million visitors to the island in 2005. Only a tiny fraction of those will be from the US, but not because many more Americans aren’t itching to go.

Despite four decades of trade restrictions, the American affinity for Cuban culture remains strong, as evidenced by the continued fetishization of Cohiba cigars and Ché T-shirts, as well as a lingering nostalgia for all things Hemingway. There are roughly 1.4 million people of Cuban heritage in the US, many who still have family on the island. Like Armando Menocal, these Cuban-Americans want to visit their homeland. And then there is the American thirst for adventure travel. While many south-of-the-border paradises have suffered rampant development that has led to overcrowding and even environmental ruin, Cuba is still wild. Unlike popular outdoor sports destinations such as Costa Rica, Cuba doesn’t attract much in the way of ecotourism and is not widely renowned for its natural splendor. It should be.

Michael Sandrock, a Boulder, Colorado-based journalist who just returned from his 28th visit to the island, believes that Cuba has the potential to be one of the world’s great ecotourism destinations. “It has spectacular mountains and beautiful beaches, but the big thing is that there has simply been no development on large parts of the island, so a lot of it is still pristine, almost like you would imagine the old Caribbean.”

The Cuban government has lately taken measures to keep it that way. All told, the island now claims seven UNESCO Biosphere Reserves, five national parks, and six Wetlands of International Importance. In all, more than a fifth of Cuba’s total land area is protected in some way—at least on paper. Even Viñales is now a national park with hiking and biking trails. It has been featured in climbing magazines worldwide and is actively promoted by Menocal on his Web site www.Cuba-Climbing.com.

But the unspoiled riches and long period of isolation have created a pent-up demand that will likely loose a flood of American tourism on the island’s shores when the trade embargo ends. According to CNN, conservative estimates predict a million Americans will book flights to Cuba the year after restrictions are lifted, and as many as 3 million after five years. When that happens, it seems inevitable that Cuba will change dramatically.

The Plight of  the Gringo

For now, the single biggest factor in keeping the crowds away from Cuba’s beaches and mountains is still the American trade policy, which unilaterally enacts a de facto travel ban on its own citizens. Technically, it’s not illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba. What is illegal is to spend dollars there. An American traveler who has dropped change in Castro’s Cuba is guilty of “trading with the enemy.” And the Bush Administration, in particular, has tightened the screws on travel to the island, putting the kibosh on the “people-to-people” license loophole that facilitated legal travel in the late 90s.

Despite the restrictions, tens of thousands of Americans still do travel to Cuba every year. The scofflaws typically fly out of third countries such as Canada or Mexico to disguise their movements. Increasingly, some of those people get caught.

The consequences? Enforcement of the travel embargo is handled by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the Treasury Department. Treasury spokesperson Molly Millerwise says civil penalties for violators can range from a warning letter to fines as high as $65,000, while criminal charges can carry penalties of $250,000 or jail time, or both. She says the purpose of the ban is to “choke off travel-related dollars that Castro uses to prop up his regime.” In general, though, it’s just tough talk: Most travel violations end in fines. OFAC’s May 6, 2005 monthly report shows that the agency assessed civil penalties in 42 cases over a month for a total settlement of $42,000, plus 10 travel/import violations for $13,513.

Yet, the travel sanctions don’t make sense to many Americans. Sarah Stephens, director of the Freedom to Travel Campaign, is especially critical of the US travel ban. “It hurts everybody,” she insists. “It’s in no one’s interest. Even if you accept the policy goal of changing the government of Cuba, it doesn’t work.” To be sure, Castro hasn’t budged and most observers believe that El Jefe, now pushing 80, will only give up power when he gives up the ghost.

A Castro-free Future?

Even without the obstacles thrown up by Uncle Sam, travel in Cuba can be daunting. Dispatches from the island are filled with tales of thwarted adventure: kayaks that never make it into the country, let alone the water; sweet surf breaks that remain maddeningly inaccessible; journeys that are never undertaken for lack of the proper authorizations.

Of all the potential hassles, authorization is probably the single biggest hurdle for those who want to venture off the beaten path. “This is the mentality you’re up against in Cuba,” explains Menocal. “Anytime you want to do something new, they say, ‘That hasn’t been authorized.’ I always turn it around and say, ‘Well, does that mean it’s prohibited?’ They’re usually stumped by that.” In fostering a local climbing scene in Cuba, Menocal has learned to ignore the red tape as much as possible, but even he recognizes certain limits.

When he told a Cuban acquaintance of his plan to traverse, by kayak, the archipelagos of Sabana and Camaqüey, off Cuba’s zealously guarded northern coast, he was told flatly, “Only one man in Cuba could authorize something like that.”

“He didn’t say who that was,” recalls Menocal, “and I didn’t have to ask.”

Fidel Castro, reputedly the world’s greatest micro-manager, looms over everything in modern Cuba, and what happens when he is gone remains anyone’s guess. What’s known is that Fidel has appointed his brother Raúl, who has been in charge of the military since 1959, to be his successor. But Raúl isn’t much younger and few seem to believe he has the charisma to fill his brother’s shoes. Regardless, as long as anyone named Castro is in charge, the US-Cuba standoff is likely to continue.

For most travelers, that political backdrop adds a measure of intrigue. As Menocal puts it, “When the band takes a break between sets, there’s plenty to talk about.” In fact, if there’s one convincing argument for going to Cuba instead of some other desirable and more easily reached tropical retreat, it is precisely that Cuba, at this moment in time, is just so damned interesting—a place apart and perched on the cusp of dramatic change.

“Cuba is the anti-globalization destination,” says Michael Sandrock. “You want to get there before the fast-food restaurants do.” As they say in Cuba, anda si puedes—go if you can.