Caving in the Amazon

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The guide that the lodge sent us with for excursions was Luis. He grew up in the primary jungle, speaks Kichiwa (I think that's the correct spelling, one of the tribal languages), as well as Spanish and a little English. Thanks to Richard's ability to speak some Spanish and Luis' ability to speak some English, it went quite well :) There were some caves were only a 15 minute drive from where we were staying.

One of the things I did do was to go in one of the caves. It's a wet cave, which I took as meaning it had a stream, or was damp, or something. Nope, it had full waterfalls, deep parts that we had to swim through, and all that. Of course, I had clothes on (not bathing suit, like Richard who was going swimming afterwards in the spring water pools) and we had my new camera. It ended up being great, I just might have prepared differently for the day!! Luis was able to do the swimming part holding the camera bag over his head while Richard & I waited our turn with fingers crossed.

Doing the photos smaller, since I have a bunch from the cave. Click any to make full size.


Getting ready for caving, still near entrance and natural light! Once we were past the first curve, it was entirely dark, except for two flashlights (weak ones!) that Luis & Richard had.

No cave would be complete without some bats! Lots more, but somewhat hard to get good photos of.

And spiders. That's Richard's (large) hand, to show the size...not so tiny!!

Closer up of the spider...might not want to click & enlarge this one, he's kind of nasty!

Coming through a narrow part, belly made for a tight fit at times!

Further into the cave there is a type of mud that is supposed to be good for the skin. Luis put it on me & Richard. Says it's better than anything they sell.

Just like a day at the spa...what more could I want??

At one point we found one of the waterfalls. Got to play in it a bit :) There were three pools at the bottom of it. A narrow one that's around 5 meters deep, and then the two larger ones at 1 and 3 meters each. We took advantage of that to wash the mud off our faces.



hopping in, with Luis standing by in case I slipped.



Where we exited the cave.

Richard coming out of the cave

Just outside of the cave, getting ready for hike down to where we started from.

Butterfly near where car was parked.

Stopped by Luis' house before getting driven back to the lodge. He showed us his snake, one that he'd found with his daughters while on a hike. Richard told him that we used to have a snake, he asked where we got it from and was baffled when we told him a pet store, "you pay for these?"

Oh, and got to play with some things his daughters had made, crowns & necklaces and stuff :) King & Queen of the jungle!!