COOLING OFF

After the zoo, we drove back to the hostal that we had eaten at the night before and had a big lunch (almuerzo). The hostal was even prettier in the daytime with an indoor pond (with a small crocodile wandering around in it) and lots of tree-like furniture. Also, the rest of us met the monkey that the others had befriended the night before. Monkeys seemed to be like dogs and just wandered around somewhat aimlessly.

After el almuerzo, we changed into our swimsuits for some pool time! As soon as I changed into my suit, I walked out of the changing room to see about a million school-aged children staring at me. It turned out that there was a large field trip or something to go swimming as well. So our group and the kids cooled off in the pool. At first I think we kind of scared them, but they warmed up quickly and pretty soon there were chicken fights with people from both groups.

Dallas and Murph jumping off the ledge...despite looks Dallas really did jump and Murph didn't push her

HITTING UP THE FOREST

After a bit of swimming, it started to rain (haha, big surprise!) and we hopped back into our yellow bus, which I was possibly the Magic School Bus. I mean, it took us to all these crazy cool places, and the only thing it was missing was Mrs. Frizzle. Anyway, we headed back to la Comunidad Villano to our schoolhouse. There we changed into hiking clothes and I loaded up my backpack with a raincoat, flashlight, hiking sandals, camera, water, etc. Heck, I was a Girl Scout and I’ve had it drilled into me to ‘be prepared’!

A bunch of the members of the community joined us, and we saw that they had on HUGE rubber boots. I looked down at my relatively clean hiking shoes and wondered if they knew something I didn’t know. Well, actually, I knew they knew something I didn’t know, I just didn’t know what it was. Wow, that was a confusing sentence.

Heading into the jungle

So we start following our guide through someone’s backyard into a muddy trail that went through lost of bushes/grass/trees into the jungle. It was extremely muddy, and I began to figure out what those rubber boots were for. Haha, my hiking shoes didn’t stay clean for long.

As always, it started to rain, but it was warm enough that it didn’t really bother us. Pretty soon we came to a river, and I decided it was best to switch to sandals. So I switched it up, and we kept hiking down into the jungle. It was pretty slippery and muddy and a bunch of us fell. I had a remarkably ungraceful all-out slip that might have won me money on America’s Funniest Home Videos had it been filmed! Oh well, maybe I can reenact it.

crossing a river and waiting outside the cave...the white spots are rain drops, not snow :-)

So after a gorgeous hike through lots of cool trees and bushes and mud, we came to a huge cave. The shaman of the community did a blessing, and then we entered the cave in groups of seven, so we wouldn’t use all the oxygen at the same time.

When my group came, I put on my really cool flashlight headlamp, and we headed into the cave. Up to this point I had been glad I brought my backpack because I could carry my camera in it, but as we went further and further into the cave the openings got smaller and smaller and I had trouble fitting. Plus we kept going through rivers and having to crawl. Eventually I had to take off my backpack and kind of pull/throw it through the cave to the next bigger opening. Kleber was behind me and held my backpack for me as I went through smaller spots. Then he would pass my backpack to me and go through the hole himself. This was one time when I really wish I wasn’t so prepared and had just left my backpack back at the school house.

no, it's not night, we're just inside the cave

Still, other than my whole backpack fiasco (haha, my backpack is now significantly more brown with mud despite a washing in a washing machine. Well, it’s been covered in concrete and stucco and who knows what else, what can a little mud and bat poop do to it?) going through the cave was absolutely amazing. Somehow our group ended up having 10 people instead of 7, and Klevar told us not to talk much because it could shake the rocks. I never figured out if he was kidding our not.

The inside of the cave was so cool, with lots of stalactites (or stalagmites? Whichever ones hang from the ceiling). There were bats all around and I lost count of the number of times they hit me in the head/face. It was extremely muddy (and/or bat poopy) and we had to crawl a lot. At one point I just rolled/slid in an effort to keep my backpack with me. I think thanks to this unique style of caving, I managed to get the dirtiest of our group.

After about 45 minutes of crawling/hobbling/rolling through the cave, we came to a larger cavern where saw light. There was a HUGE waterfall (there are so many waterfalls in this country, I love it!) and we climbed through the waterfall to the outside!

Megan and me, post-cave, pre-waterfall shower