Upper Cueva Zumbo - Journey to Another World (2 part blog)

Friday Jeff took the day off and we headed out of the house at 7am to meet up with Tom in Florida for a cave excursion. We arrived at 9, got the key to the gate from Pipo, drove a mile or so on the old road, parked, packed up, and hiked for 45 minutes to an hour in the jungle to get to this hole. Tom has been to this cave many times. Jeff and I have been here once and did the lower section which ended after 6 hours or so at a sump. This time we were headed to the upper section which we didn't even see the previous time we were here. There's an up stream section that you get to from the same place we went in before? Hmmm. We put on our harnesses and dropped into the hole which was a little steeper/deeper than I remembered.

Down we went. Jeff came down last.

Instead of going into the tight hole that leads downstream there was another tight hole going upstream. We didn't know it was upstream since you can't see or hear the river at that point. We kept the harness and rappelling gear on since in 30 or 40 minutes there would be another drop we'd need it for. This was a tight hole with or without the harness on. We had to take packs off and maneuver our helmets to get through. This section is very different from the downstream section. Lots of breakdown and lots of slippery mud. There were a few bats, but mainly breakdown for a while. We did a lot of climbing on this trip. Lower Zumbo was magnificent but mainly all looked the same. Upper Zumbo has different sections with different looking geology. The climbing was hard work on the arms/shoulders (didn't know it until a day or two after?). In many places there were "hand lines" in place to help us conquer some very steep areas. They didn't seem that steep on the way up, but coming back and looking down it was crazy..we came UP THAT? This cave was fun because of all the climbing up and down and squeezing in and out of places.

There were lots of ups and downs.

Not much continuous crawling. There weren't many real passageways (until the big one) - there were a lot of big rock chunks to find our way through. Lucky for us Tom knew the way (to a certain point) so he could direct us toward places that seemed implausible. That is the best part of going into caves - the discovery part. Thinking that we may be in places either very few or in some cases no one has been in.

Then it started to look more like the Zumbo we knew. This cave is like Disneyland for adults...the photos just don't show the scale or how majestic it is. At this point we were moving pretty fast.

This section looks like soft sand but all this neat scallops and peeks and curls are sharp and hard.

Here we used a hand line to scale a tall area. It didn't look this formidable until we had to go down it! In a cave it is always a different trip coming back.

I thought this formation looked kind of sci-fi gargoyle like. Kind of the gatekeeper for the next part of the journey.

After a lot of mud, a lot of climbing, a lot of breakdown, hand lines and small spots we hit the river finally. It felt kind of nice at first since we were hot from all the physical work we had done up to this point.

Most of the time the water was ankle or knee high except for a few spots where I couldn't touch the bottom. The landscape in this cave is hard to describe. (continued in next blog)

Zumbo 2

What doesn't come across in photos is the real size of things. When a person is in the photo, like in this one, it gives you some idea but what about the rest of the passage or room? With a small camera you can't light up and capture the whole scene.

So we kept going and going for hours into little cracks, scaling large stone "hills" and floating under things in the river.


I like these damn formations. They are helpful for walking too.

This part looked more like the Zumbo we knew...the part with the Dr. Seuss-like formations of bored out holes, scallops and polished rock with of course a river running 10 or 12 feet below. I felt like a storybook character tiptoeing on these pointy peeks...just give me the standard Dr. Seuss tall hat with the big balls and boingy things on it and I'd fit right in.

This section was the hard "arm" section for me since you need to span the corridor with both feet and arms to make sure you don't slip.

Then we got to some gentle flowstone areas.

Here Tom is doing some more climbing in the glass-like rock.

This section of rock looked to me like a mango wood bowl we have.The scalloped rock was just unreal.

There were also a couple really nice bacon formations...just the way I like it - crispy.

These were on the way back out when we could look around a bit more. We saw quite a few Dugong fossils we didn't notice on the way in including this partial skeleton with nice vertebrate and ribs (the dark things that look like sticks).

The best part for me of this trip was the discovery part - you didn't know what you would find next. We got to a spot where it opened into a room as large as our house that had as a chandelier/focal point a gigantic column/waterfall that had water spewing in from above. You could easily walk all the way around it. Very unexpected. I also enjoyed the physical challenge of it. Lots of climbing up steep spots that were scary! It was also our first rebelay (I had some trouble). We have never rebelayed before. We had to hook our rappelling gear onto one line, then go horizontal on another to get to another vertical line. We had never done this in daylight and now we were 40 feet up on a rock face inside a cave doing it in the dark! It was a bit of a challenge but mentally it was good to know I could think my way out of the little glitches I encountered. Going down was no problem, but going up I had some of the safety line and such on the wrong side so they were crisscrossed and difficult to undo. We all got out safely at around 7:30 pm and then hiked out by the light of our headlamps. Of course there was a light rain by now and the screechy bugs were doing their creepy noises. We headed to the cars and washed off the best we could, packed up, got the key, opened the gate and headed out for a bit of food. We ended up at home at midnight. We were really tired and the dirtiest we have ever been I think. Even though we were diving at 8:30am I HAD to shower. That shower felt really really good! We are going to come back to this cave to try to go further. It is a really long cave and when it is this physical it is hard to do more without getting sloppy. Now that we know what to expect in the first 5 hours or so I think we can go further the next time but will have to get an earlier start!

It's Showtime! Pitaya Bursts onto the Scene

A year or so ago I was investigating bizarre fruits that I might want to add to the finca. I came across the "Dragon Fruit," or Pitaya (Pitahaya). Since it is a cactus/succulent thing I didn't want to spend some bucks and mail order it so I put it in the back of my mind. Then I was at Eneida's Nursery in Cabo Rojo and whalla...there one was for $1.50. I thought our elevation was too high and we might be too wet but for that price I went for it. For a year I have been ignoring the ugly little plant and was just about to move it to a better climbing spot when some giant buds appeared!

We got a little rain and these buds tripled in size and got all elongated.

Then they started to do the "Little Shop of Horrors" thing (minus the singing)..I swear the bracts were moving and dancing about.

So every day several times a day I watched.

And watched some more.

Then I did an evening check (they are nighttime bloomers and it is only for around 18 hours or so) and they had burst into action! They were HUGE and beautiful and did I say huge?

Look at the size of them, they are almost coconut sized! They also had a very nice scent which I didn't expect.

So there in our yard are these gigantic blooms just waiting for bats to pollinate them. The only bad thing is that I probably won't get fruit since you need two different plants. There is a plant some miles away in the jungle but I have not seen buds or flowers on it.

With or without the fruit it is very exciting to witness the blooms since they are so short lived. I did some finger pollinating but it won't work. It just makes me scan websites for possibly the pink flowering one so next year (actually they bloom more than once a year) I can get fruit. Since they are so easy to propagate it is possible Eneida's uses one plant for stock so I don't want to get one from there. I can, however head to the jungle spot and break off a section to start...yeah that's what I'll do. If you haven't seen the fruit you should look it up on line. Supposedly you can eat them fresh as dessert or savory but I have only had them dried.

Look at all the frilly parts.This photo was at 6 in the morning just before it wilted into non-existence.

Pretty sensational!

Another addition to the finca is yet another cat. This little, and I mean little, kitty showed up hungry and very affectionate last night. What are we supposed to do? Ignore the hunger cries? Ignore the purring and rubbing? Well, we decided to ignore the protests of the other 11 until Jeff can find someone at work to take him or the other cats get tired of being bent out of shape about it. It slept inside, tried to pal around with the other hissing growling ones and curled up somewhere inside since we awoke to some little meows...anyone want a very nice little kitty?

Chicken Problems

So we moved our old solar dehydrator down to where the chickens roost so we might possibly get some eggs from them. Well THAT hasn't quite worked out. We have eggs all over the place but we can't eat them since we don't know when they were laid. Eggs all over the place in non-obvious spots where we can't see them, and hens sitting in harms way that don't move and suffer "mishaps." (more about that later). This white hen was sitting on about 18 eggs and I spotted her when I was harvesting parcha. She is right under the parcha mound in what becomes a stream or raging river depending on the rainfall amounts. I start checking up on her daily and one day I hear a faint peep. The eggs were starting to hatch!

I could hear a faint peep and when I sat and watched saw the first little guy under her. There was another dead looking wet slimy one that would peep occasionally and then stop then peep then stop but wasn't under her. I moved it over and hoped for the best. So I spend the better part of an afternoon watching these things hatch out - the babies in the eggs peck a little circle, they move occasionally, she kind of rolls the egg, it pecks it's way out after a few hours and then lays there peeping once in a while while fluffing up.

To make a long story short, in the end there were six that were trailing her around the next day. 4 were dead in the nest (I think she suffocated them) - 3 fluffed up but dead and a few that never fluffed. There were some eggs that didn't hatch at all. I pushed the dead ones out of the area since ants were invading and hoped she would be a good mom. Today there are 5 chicks. Number six couldn't really keep up. I would hear it peeping and would go and retrieve it and bring it to its mom and siblings and it would be left behind again. I figured I either had to raise it or ignore it. If I raised it it would be heartache when it became a "pet" and something got it so I let nature take its course. Now there are 5. In the end there will be only 1 or 2 since the birds swoop down and take them. For now I enjoy watching them grow up.

So I am in the yard and see this thing coming up the driveway. It doesn't belong here. Turns out to be a mutant chicken that somehow flew in. It has a comb that flops to cover one eye, it doesn't ever stand upright, and only one tail feather. It also has a pathetic crow that doesn't even sound right.

I put out corn and it can't even see until it does the hair toss to flip its comb out of the way!

I swear - if it is mutant, pregnant, injured, sick or disturbed it makes its way here!


This hen was almost hacked with the machete. I was cutting down a platano and after it fell I bent down to cut closer to the ground and I saw her just sitting on a pile of eggs. She never peeped, squawked or made any effort to move. Her nest was in grass at the base of the platano. She sat on the eggs a long while and then I guess gave up and nothing hatched.

This nest is abandoned - no one sits on them.


Lots of eggs everywhere but none we can eat since I don't know how long they have been there.

A sad mishap in the yard happened yesterday. Jeff weed whacked the feathers off one of the wings of yet another hen sitting on eggs. He was using the trimmer (very noisy) and made a pass and the stupid hen was hit and flew up and away. She has a nasty bare spot on one wing and has left that nest for good it looks like. It wasn't even a nest, she was just sitting in the grass. If it were a pet hen we would take it to a vet but I can't pick it up so it is on its own. Eggs everywhere and none we can eat. None that will hatch. I even relocated a couple eggs to the base of trees to give them a similar but better location. Nothing. Oh well.