Snorkeling at Crashboat After the "Tropical" Depression

They call Tropical Depressions depressions for a reason. The last few days have been kind of depressing due to a lack of sun! The clouds have been pretty spectacular but there has been a lot of Sahara Dust in the air and just a gloomy grey sort of look to things. Today was a different story! Sun at last...a nice sunrise out my window, a ball of fire rising in the sky and not a cloud in sight (yeah, it was just after 6 am). I decided to head to the beach around 9:30 while there was sun. I wanted to try out my new Pentax WG-II camera. This is one of the rough and tough ones you can take an atmosphere underwater and into wet, muddy, and rugged (caves) situations. These cameras don't do a spectacular job but are compact and work fairly well considering where you can take them. My last one got ruined on the last caving trip and this is the replacement. Of course they change the designs and such but oh, well. I headed to Crashboat hoping for dry sand and clear water. I sat out for 10 minutes before I got hot and headed for the pilings. I snorkeled out in the 80 something degree water. It felt really nice.

This time of year is always off and on. There are always lots of juvenile fish but visibility changes day to day depending on rain (erosion sends mud onto the reefs), dust (gets suspended in the water), and swell (can make currents and churn things up). It was pretty clear today. I could see the bottom at Crashboat and make out eels and fish on the bottom wreckage. There was a nice school of little blue juvenile fish in a mob near the surface...sunlight was streaming through the pilings...I spent a couple hours in and out of the water enjoying the beauty. I stopped and took in the gorgeous view and had great feelings of enjoyment...this is why I love Puerto Rico!

Then I looked down over the railing...this is why I hate Puerto Rico. I guess you just can't look down? So the Tropical Depression may be gone but...

Food, Garbage and Nuisances

WARNING - THIS IS NOT A FUN BLOG ENTRY IT IS FILLED WITH IRRITATION!!!!!!

First I'll start with the nuisances - nuisance 1 - there is a Coastal Contacts ad banner on my blog and I have been having a really shitty time trying to get a %$^% order from them! I do not want this ad on my site. I just got an email saying "thank you for your return" which of course is for an order that did not come at all. Nor did I get a slip from the Post Office or a call from Fed Ex or a tracking number or anything. DO NOT ORDER from them if you are in Puerto Rico anyway. There is no free shipping HERE despite us getting USPS. Their 1800 number doesn't even work - you have to search all over their crappy site and by chance try their international number to get through to someone who doesn't know what is going on.

Piss off 2 - I have been waiting for a jar of pet wormer pills from a Canadian company (no one in the US sends here that has this product and price). I believe it is coming since I have a USPS parcel slip that I have a registered package, but it could be some unknown delivery of something for my birthday (that is really unlikely since I don't know of anything and what I REALLY want is the cat wormer pills for my b-day anyway!) It could be taking a while since it is medicine and from Canada but it has been 8 or so days (but a holiday was in there). My fingers are crossed. USPS is one of the few things that WORKS in Puerto Rico. The gal even delivers my packages behind the gate so I don't have to go to town and wait in a line to get them!!! If these nuisances are their mix up we are really doomed and it is all going downhill!

Now on to food and garbage. I was reading on the Huffington Post Green page about a gal who tracked her garbage from her house to the transfer station to another transfer station to the dump. She tabulated all the miles that garbage traveled and it was a huge waste. The average person makes 4 1/2 pounds of garbage A DAY! I have never been a fan of garbage and since moving to Puerto Rico, where it is much more "in your face" and "on the ground" and "in the caves" and "on the beach" and "thrown out of cars" etc etc I have become outright disgusted. When I say "in your face" what I mean is - in the states all the disgusting packaging is removed before the consumer sees it so it is easier not to think about. You buy furniture and all that crap stays in the truck they deliver it in. You buy a refrigerator and the old one is "taken away." Here in Puerto Rico these are not options. Everything comes to you with all its original foam, cardboard, plastic, tape, wood etc and it is amazing. Of course there is a lot of just plain bad behavior here - the supermarkets will put one fruit on a foam tray, wrap it three times with plastic wrap, put a price sticker on it (the apple even comes with its own sticker on it anyway). Times that times all the fruit or vegetables you need on a trip and you end up with a lot of foam and plastic - or you use a lot of gas to go somewhere you can buy loose fruit/veggies. Here they actually have a person come up to you with a "paid" sticker to stick on a cat food bag or other large thing that won't fit in a bag. They even TIE a bag to the handle of say laundry soap if it won't fit in a bag. WTF? Do they think you are going to run off with a 20 pound bag of cat food? People here don't run anywhere ever! My favorite bad/non thinking behavior is little mini coffee cups that they automatically give you a lid and stir stick with and won't refill your paper cup - they will give you another cup/stick/lid if you get another mini coffee. If you refuse it they just throw it away even though it is perfectly good. They also put only 2 things in each plastic bag. Bag manufacturers make bags that are so crappy you have to double bag to carry anything and they are just too large - the bags could be half the height and use half the petroleum to make or at least make a shorter stronger one. So the answer is cloth bags, right? Not here - they continue to try to put my stuff in plastic bags and then put the plastic bags in the cloth one! It is a battle every time I go to a new checker or store. In the states I used to love it when they would put say soap, or dish soap in its own bag inside the bag - hey, it is already in a plastic bottle and I am going to use it to wash the fruit anyway...does it need another bag? Ok, so SAMS club might be better you think. No....here is all the packaging from a little trip that I haven't even unpacked stuff from yet. 

Inside the ziploc (yes plastic) box were - 6 more boxes of bags! Just think of this one example. Every store that sells the individual boxes gets them in these small boxes and dismantles it all to put them on the shelves. How many bags can a person use? It is so easy to grab a bag for cut carrots or a few grapes ... times each item, by each kid's/adults lunch and you get the idea. Are we the only country that wastes this much or it is people as a species? Then there is the lunch meat in a plastic bin, that houses 3 plastic-embalmed circular meat packets of  "slices" that are then sealed with a plastic band which apparently pops open and there is a need for two pieces of plastic tape. Is buying "bulk" really helping anything at all? I also have a great plastic meshy type bag of "artisanal" red onions - how ecological and artisanal is that? So I have 5 pounds of carrots that I peel, chop ends off of and slice for the freezer (in the plastic bags) or for in a water filled plastic container in the fridge for easy eating/cooking. This gives me more waste that at least I can compost. I think I am going to compost cardboard now too - most writing is soy based ink so it is safe to put down to suppress weeds and will rot and add fluff to the garden. So overall I am thinking about what to do about garbage and about the garbage society we live in-- I must have too much time or irritation on my hands!

On to some good food news. If you are reading this from the states you can start laughing now. The big excitement yesterday was bing cherries, scallops, frozen blueberries and asparagus! There isn't any green or colored food here. Only hairy brown vegetables that cook up white and green peppers.  The cherries are amazing and despite my knowing that they had to come here by way of fossil fuels I am enjoying the immensely. I wouldn't whine so much about food here if it were here because it was sustainably grown here. Unfortunately it isn't, 95% of food is shipped/flown here so why can't there be choices? Why can't stuff be grown here - at least the majority of what is flown in (guineos, platanos, yucca, name, pimientos)? I guess the Dominican Republic does it better! Some delightful food news is that we have terrific fruit in our yard and we always have something. If I could live on fruit we would be all set. Carambola is good enough for a few things and we get fruit like this 4 times a year. I planted more kinds of avocados to increase the season with different varieties. We have around 10 trees and they are separated so they don't cross pollinate (hopefully) and bloom at different times. We do get fruit at different times but it still isn't as long a season as I'd like since they don't keep. This year was going to be spectacular but wind knocked off a lot of the little fruits. I can't wait for this most perfect fruit! The longan is blooming nicely.

This blossom is for a corozone which is a fruit you will never eat unless you live here or somewhere in the tropics and know a person with a tree. The fruit is ripe one minute, overripe or pecked the next and doesn't store at all. Boy is it yummy though!

I go back and forth about the soursop (guayabana). The flowers are cool and the fruit is prehistoric. I chuck it in the blender, then through a sieve and use the pulp in pancakes, or breads, or make juice. I first had it in Fiji and when it is ripe and you are in the mood it is very refreshing!

The oranges are looking good. The quenepas are getting bigger. There are loads of bananas and the lemons are ripening. I've eaten some strange peanut butter fruit and of course lots of parcha! Growing your own food is very satisfying and I need to do a better job with vegetables.  I stopped planting things since we thought we had the house sold but I am ready to plant some things now since we are staying put for a while! It is hard to grow vegetables this time of year though when the rain starts. If you've got fruit and the rain comes they will crack or become like balloon animals. I need to build a structure to do it better. So those are the rantings of the day. I think I need to sort through stuff and get rid of things. We don't have all that much stuff but then again we do.

Back to Hell - Really?

We got the long awaited cave call - only the news this time was that it would be another trip to Hell! You may remember our first ever cave trip with Tom. Cerdo Infierno...a trip that started with a disgusting smell which led to a pool of water with a gigantic bloated dead maggot infested hog floating in it...the news that we would be diving into the pig water to go under a sump etc etc. That little adventure ended with Jeff on one side of the sump with Tom and 3 of us on the other side instructed not to follow. We all rounded up an hour later and took a side passage that ended with Jeff and another guy getting lost....you get the drift. The second trip to Hell was a different section that went a little better (you may remember the frayed hand line). So our excitement was boiling over with the thought of surveying yet another section of Hell. Why not Heaven for a change? When we arrived it was already living up to its expectations. The entrance looks okay until you look at the river that feeds into it.


Oh, refrigerators...great. Tires...trash everywhere of every kind. Metal, plastic, stuffed animals, clothing, styrofoam. Hell has it all! We enter the cave and are surprised at how large the passage is. It is like a large lava tube kind of. Already we smell a smell and start having flashbacks of the giant pig. We find the place where Tom left off surveying. He believed the cave would go only a little ways (maybe 200 meters) beyond his surveying (this was based on previous maps, accounts from people etc). He told us there would be water and there was. The smell was making me gag and my imagination was whirling about what it could be. It didn't smell as huge as a hog, but didn't smell as small as a gecko either. Oh such anticipation. It wasn't long before we found the source of the smell...a Boa, or section of one at least, that was a few feet long and very bloated. Soon after that we encountered the water and I was pretty hesitant to go in. With all the garbage I just didn't want to do it unless there was some payoff. Diana decided to pass on the water part. Jeff went first and said it kept going, so it looked like the original plan of doing 2 caves wasn't going to happen - this cave seemed to offer more than expected. Since it was the only cave of the day I decided to go for a swim and we continued with the surveying for a while.

This cave was truly hell - there was so much garbage it was hard to even be there. It is a mix of disgust, horror, amazement and anger to be a few hours underground and see all this crap. The karst is a water filter and much of the water supply travels through it. Do people know that their water is mingling with all their garbage? How could they NOT know? How the hell do you even get a washing machine through the jungle and into the river in the first place? Here it is - one of many.


There were lots of tires and car parts and hub caps and bottles and clothing. Deep in the cave obscene commercialism of a "Happy Meal" shows up as a little plastic princess.

Amidst all the crap there were some beautiful formations like this dam. Why do people have to ruin everything they touch? After making it past the stinky snake and washers and refrigerators we walked in chin high water to some collapse where the cave supposedly ended. Well it didn't end. There was a little crack for me to explore and when I did I came out at an overhang overlooking an immense tunnel with a river in it. We didn't have rope or vertical gear with us and it was not possible to climb up or down it so we looked for alternate routes. We found a little drop that went into a river and we headed in and after wandering in it for a while got to a place where we could look up and see where we had looked down. Very exciting!

It continued on and branched with water coming in from 2 different directions. There were a couple levels in this cave and that was totally unexpected. The snake stink was gone and the large appliances were broken down at least so excitement took over where anger had been. Diana had left the cave and we didn't want to have her wait forever but it ended up being a Lechuga situation - let's just see around this corner, and the next, and the next and before you know it is has been a couple hours since the surveying stopped. A couple hours of fun exploration.

One of the neatest things we found was this faucet. It was like a giant shower head in the ceiling of the cave with water just gushing out of it! Looking up into the shower head it was a nice formation that looked kind of fancy. The water coming out of it was not a delicate dribble.

There was also a line up of around 8 or so smaller nozzles that were spraying water into this pool as well.

There is much more to explore including a passage we didn't even go in. Tom thinks we can take a long day to survey it but Jeff and I think we went 1/2 mile in and believe with the side shoots it will be more than a day to complete. However long it takes it is very interesting once you get past the evil beginning. So back we went. Here is a full-size blue garage can stuck in a crevice.

Oh, here's another garbage can deep in the cave. Too bad the garbage can wasn't on the outside filled with all the $&%$ garbage now inside the cave. Back past the snake, the washers, the garbage cans, the metal sheets, the stuffed animals (3) and other things people have tossed into the river we left trying to think about the wonderful water spout and the exciting adventures ahead. This includes another trip to hell and back, or maybe two.