This is Why We are Here...Caving in Utuado

Jeff is in New Mexico for work and is eating at wonderful restaurants that have good service and good food...he is driving 5 minutes to work with courteous drivers...is going to stores that have things in them...but he missed an excellent jungle/cave trip. Don't worry honey, we will do this one again because you need to see it! It started in the typical way...someone doesn't show up on time (or at all in this case)...someone doesn't have lunch etc etc. Despite all that, those of us that appeared left for the cave in a reasonable amount of time. Tom suggested I leave my car. I figured something was up so I did. We drove around and around between magotes ( these "hills") and finally came to the place. I never know how he knows these places even though he shows us topo maps etc. We drive up to a house that is in the middle of all this (no other houses around). It is of course disgusting with garbage all over, too many dogs, animals in cages etc. I never understand this because the road to their house has obviously been planted with wonderful flowers and shrubs for quite a ways. Well, let's skip my anger about that.


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The people, who despite their self-made living conditions, are very nice and point us to a trail that this time really is a trail. It goes for 30 or 40 minutes down the steep hillside. We get to an entrance that doesn't give a clue about what is inside. We scramble in and immediately I can see how immense this cave is - it is wide, tall, and has formations that are absolutely huge. This first one is just inside the entrance. This column at some point fell over and another column formed on top of it. It is HUGE!

Diana is looking up at it. Everything is fused together into one structure but you can see time flash before your eyes as you look closer. Tens of thousands of years.The cave is free of garbage and spray painting which is unusual for a walk-in cave. There is a lot of damage to formations where careless cavers or other visitors have put muddy hands on growing stalagmites or have broken off formations by leaning on them, grabbing them and who knows what else. There is also a lot of natural damage where things have collapsed or fallen. Diana is looking at a broken formation here.

Photos don't give you a clue about the scale of things here. Crappy cameras aren't wide enough and you can't light a completely dark expanse like this. Here Juan is entering a room. There are helictites, curtains, bacon, flow stone, dams, sorbetos, columns etc on a huge scale here.

The cave is extremely muddy - cakey muddy - but amidst the mud are actively growing formations. How beautiful is this?

Helictites are the circ-de-sole of the underworld - anti gravity formations that curl off in multiple directions. There are many helictite chandeliers that are just too high up to photograph.I don't care how many times I see things, I am still astounded at the magic of it all. What if we could live long enough to see these formations 100 years from now...1000 years from now?

We always see maria tree seeds inside caves that have bats but these sprouted quite tall given that they are deep where there is no light. Must have been a large seed with a lot of energy stored. The leaves were perfectly albino. Just look at this...

and this. Tom is having a look around. Diana is posing near another column. It was really hard to try to get the whole thing in the photo.

Here is one of the many beautiful, white, newly forming (time is relative here) formations in danger of being wrecked by backpacks, muddy gloves and careless people. There are many white formations in this cave. This cave is spectacular because of the size of the formations. It is just amazing!So when it was all over we washed off, hopped in the car (and then out of it multiple times) and went down a "road" Tom knew about. He told the other non-4-wheel drive SUV not to try it. We drove over trees, limestone chunks, around steep drop-offs, through muddy puddles etc etc. What an adventure! It was a long 5 miles of extreme fun! It was something I would never ever do and the car didn't bottom out until the very last part! When Diana forwards photos of that part of the adventure I'll post a couple! Wow is all I can say. (and of course "what's next"?)