CubaPLUS Magazine

At the end of the 20th century and as a good omen for scientific research in the third millennium, exactly in 1998 the Caving Group and Adventure Sports (GEDA), began studies of a cave named after his name, but written so that it seemed like a beautiful feminine nickname. It was the most important discovery of the group, a spelelunca of about 5 km long, located in the Sierra de la Guasasa, and was a complex Jurassic gray limestone karst, close to the north of the beautiful town of Viñales, with great tourist potential in the western province of Pinar del Río.

Its main access is located on the west slope of the mountain range, at a height of 70 m above the level of the San Vicente Valley and 210 above sea level. The first stage of thorough investigation of the Geda Cave, of about 10 years, resulted in the discovery and extraction of more than 250 specimens belonging to 18 species of extinct and living mammals from the Cuban Quaternary period. Such remains were later classified and dated at the Institute of Ecology and Systematics of Havana, where they were taken for study.

The study confirmed the existence in the cave of a fossiliferous deposit that contains 18 species of mammals from the orders Pilosa, Soricomorpha, Rodentia and Chiroptera, which represent four of the five orders and 46.15% of the species recorded for the west of the Island of Cuba, during the Pleistocene upper Holocene. Very interesting it turned out that most of the specimens preserved the complete and anatomically organized bones, all discreetly distributed in the two levels of galleries of the cavern.

However, the analysts found no evidence that the mammals permanently used the aforementioned espelunca in the area. They estimated that possibly due to severe weather conditions, that fauna was forced to take refuge in the cave and there they were trapped after several collapses or landslides, which closed natural exits.
.Very interesting and invaluable for the discipline of Cuban speleology, it has resulted in the unique adventure and experience of the Geda Cave, located in a such a privileged natural environment and even more so considering that this type of formations also house secondary structures unique in the world.

In addition, they show and conserve a part of the paleontological universe of fauna extinct and the archaeological legacy of aborigines and maroons in a Cuban province not called the “Capital of the Cuban Carso” for nothing, since the experts have found authentic treasures in its caves and reliefs. It is good to specify that the two are located in the Viñales National Park. largest cave systems in Cuba, one named Palmarito by the people, with more than 60 km of extension and the famous Great Cave of Santo Tomás with 45 km.

Returning to the Geda, that reservoir of fossils of already extinct animals, belonging to all the edentate described for the Quaternary Cuban. And it is outstanding for the true glassware it has made up of stalagmites, stalactites, helictites, crystal roses, cinter, gours, palettes, columns... which have made experts consider that it houses numerous themes rarely seen in other cave formations.