Caving and Mud and Bats and Mosquitoes

The next morning we got back into the car to set off to find a flat tyre again, I was mortified as we were quite remote and I wasn’t sure that we could get the tyre fixed and the roads are so bad you really need a good spare, we went about 5 miles up the road to the gas station and he told us that the garage next door would fix it, it was a $2 repair. So we drove about 1 hour back into the mountainous inner of Costa Rica and to the university based in San Isidro. We were looking for a lecturer who was director of some local organisation that was trying to reforest the higher reaches of the local watershed and was needing some expert help in using satellite photography to determine where the most effort needed putting in, so anyway enough of the detail, we found this woman and she directed Jenny to a thesis completed by some students the previous year on the watershed and we were allowed to copy the CD of the material, I am not sure if you are really allowed to do this but we did and basically it was the whole of the material Jenny needed for her thesis, she can steal all the graphs and maps and anything else she needs and resubmit it via her own department, but as she is such an honest person I doubt she will just do that, when I carried out my final year design project, I lied about all the references and made up lots of material just to get it completed well ahead of schedule. It what using your brain is all about. So we found lots of good material for Jenny and she will be able to put her considerable geography knowledge to work for this project for the thesis eventually, and with that final happy note we set off back to home in San Jose. It is a long drive over those mountains again, with horrible broken roads and speeding trucks and the weather started pouring rain again. We were travelling about 30 mph all the way and missing all the holes this time
And we arrived back in out house safe and sound at 5pm, only to start packing for the field trip the next morning in the north of Costa Rica at a reserve called Barra Honda. We had to get up at 5am to drive to the university to catch the bus which was driving us to the reserve. It was nice for once to be not driving and I was able to watch the mountains and rivers go by and feel relaxed about it all, the area is a limestone area and we were going to do a survey on a cave system, my first ever proper caving, ropes and ladders and harnesses, all very sexy. But to get to the cave was about a 2 hour walk

Yes they are cacti, it has a 5 month dry spell in summer

It was nice when we started but it started raining and we were the last people into the cave and it was going to be dark after we got out, I wasn’t looking forward to walking through a tropical rainforest in the dark but I was in a big group and I didn’t want to appear a big girls blouse so I said nothing. The forest was new growth and no trees over 25-35 years old, but it was alive with monkeys, both the capuchin and the howler monkeys, I can say honestly that to see monkeys in the trees is almost heavenly, they were unafraid of us and would just eat and watch us walk by, maybe 4 to 6 groups in total. Not many other animals and few birds, a couple of hummingbirds fighting over the best spots for the flowers. The path was pretty muddy as it is rainy season and were getting pretty wet and muddy, we got to the cave entrance to find it basically like a pile of big rocks around a large hole in the ground, it was surrounded by a small fence and not looking like a tourist attraction, we put on the harnesses and attached a rope and waited our turn to go down, the mosquitoes were waitig for darkness and we could hundreds swarming around us especially me, a few bats flew out of the cave and then were eating the mosquitoes around us , it was a fantastic site , I had a bat take one from about a foot from my nose, I saw it perfectly swoop towards it and take it directly in my flashlight beam, that was great but I once again got bitten all over my bare arms. We were allowed to climb down the ladder, all 60 feet of it and the rope was just in case my fingers stopped squeezing the metal into submission, I was terrified I will admit. The ladder was covered in about 2 inches of mud and was very nasty to hold and the mud was getting all over your clothes as you went down the ladder and it was dripping onto your head and clothes, it was a nasty sight. When we got down to the bottom it was very rocky and the roof had caved in many times over the years and I was wondering what would happen if there was a small quake to shake the roof a bit, I think we would have all died very easily. So I tried to forget the dangers and looked around as the rest of the students and Jenny started plotting out the cave and measuring inclines and distances,


The cave was very large and the walls were all covered with mineral deposits in curtain type formations all very interesting,


I was then told to do the normal tourist thing and time how long it takes to go through the cave system, we had to climb down another small ladder into a lower chamber and it was dangerous as you couldn’t see where you were putting your feet when first getting on the ladder, I was wondering why on earth this place has been allowed to become a tourist destination, we then had to tiptoe along edges of fallen rocks and then scramble over other rocks and then squeeze through a small gap, my claustrophobia was getting bad, then walk through a small ant-chamber, it was all very nice but not worth the effort of putting myself into this danger, it took about 30 minutes in total, last year I went to a cavern system in Northern Virginia, called Luray Caverns and it has stairs going down about 250 and then all lit all through the cavers and all on concrete pathways, I didn’t get dirty at all, it was fantastic, but this wasn’t this was nice but very hazardous, nothing I would ever recommend to any tourist, and something nobody who was the slightest bit unfit could do, nobody over 50 and nobody fat, there was no rescue system and if you broke a leg you would be down there for about 3 days until they got some international help in to recover you. We spent about 2 hours down there and when we got out it was pouring with rain and it took about an hour for all to get out, so we left with about half the group and immediately got lost, we were wandering about the forest going in all directions, going back and forth over the paths trying to see if we could remember anything, we did get to the main path finally but it was worrying to think we may spend all night up on the mountain. We got back to the hut that 6 people were sharing and Jenny and myself got in the shower before anybody else and went to bed so exhausted I cant remember anyone else coming into the cabin. Once again I was eaten alive in the cabin, I am sweet meat to those goddam tropical mosquitoes. The next day was another adventure and another episode