Conquering Cucaracha

It’s about time! They say you only visit Cucaracha once. This was my fourth trip. On my first trip I got tired of waiting around so I left the cave. I did not know Katrina and the others were going to continue on. My second trip ended early due to a little mishap with some gear. The third trip had the group running out of the cave gasping for air and not because of someone farting.
This time was different.

Looking back at the T junction

It was mid March, cool, and the dry season was dry. I was apprehensive about going but Tom managed to convince me to go. We went with another scientist who is researching sand deposits looking for quartz and we also placed a data logger in the hot room. I was concerned about not being able to breathe and all the crawling involved (I hate crawling). Upon entering the cave you're hit with a blast of hot, humid, thick, and possibly caustic air (if you can call it “air”). You don’t even pay any attention to the cave's namesake (cucaracha) even though they cover the floor and walls in some spots. But this time it wasn’t so bad. You wouldn’t survive long but you could breathe.

The three of us quickly and quietly (as not to disturb the bats) passed through the bat room in just a few minutes. We waded through the 3 foot deep puddle of dead bat stew and arrived at the “T” junction. The temperature dropped 10 degrees and remained about 80 degrees with 96% humidity. We took a left and headed “upstream”. The passage is somewhat decorated but very muddy. It gets small and requires some belly crawling in spots. We looked at some deposits and checked out more of the rarely visited upstream section.


"Upstream"

Rope

We also tried to take some CO2 readings but the meter just kept flashing error. We had a hunch this could mean very high CO2 levels. Turns out that the meter only goes to 10,000 ppm and the meter was quickly pegged. We went back to the T junction and proceeded to go down stream to wash all the mud off in the clean water and cool off a bit before going into the Hot room to survey and place a data logger. It was after 8pm and we had expected all the bats to have left the cave. The bats mostly had left the Hot room.

Nice little clean waterfall

It was over 93 degrees, 98% humidity, over 10,000ppm CO2, low Oxygen, high Ammonia, and who knows what else. But this is going big borehole passage! We came to a cliff with going passage on the other side. We did not have rope or vertical gear with us. It was 4 hours in the cave and 30 minutes in these conditions. We placed the data logger and took only a couple of survey shots then proceeded out. I was in the lead (I wanted out) but either because we didn't wait long enough or because of the full moon there was a bottleneck of bats at the exit. I hunched down low and made my way out into the fresh night air. The data logger should last 11 months if it doesn't get eaten by rats.


I was in the lead (I wanted out) but either because we didn’t wait long enough or because of the full moon there was a bottleneck of bats at the exit. I hunched down low and made my way out into the night time fresh air. The data logger should last 11 months if it doesn’t get eaten by rats.