Down by the Gate...My Favorite New Plant...Mani

2 acres is a lot of property. Not all of it is tamed but a good portion is and I spend 3-6 hours a day outside doing stuff. A lot of the time it doesn't look like I've done anything even though I am sore and tired! It would be nice to work on one area until it is "done," but it just doesn't work that way. Now that we are getting some afternoon rain and dew at night everything is out of control. It is the perfect time to plant though - at least some things. In an effort to make things "easier" and find long term solutions to problem areas I make them harder at first. One area is down by the gate. This is what the gate area looked like when we first got here. It was pretty much just grass and overgrown trees from the neighbor house. This spot is really hard to mow since is is sloped and the driveway is long and steep.


We got tired of dirt flowing onto the driveway in the rains and tired of weeding/mowing etc down there and generally didn't like how messy it looked. Since we drive up and down everyday it needed changing. We built the wall to stabilize the dirt, make a planter and neaten it up.

This is how it looks today - a lot more tidy. I started the croton hedge on the right with cuttings from our other hedge and they are now actual plants instead of a sticks with 2 leaves on them!

Since our area is hilly, the neighbor's put their garbage cans down where they can be picked up and I got sick of seeing them as I drove up to our house. 3 cans...none of them ours (ours is inside our gate until garbage day which sometimes is an unknown but lately is 5:30am on Mondays). I planted the purple shooting star plant on the left and whalla! no unsightly garbage cans! This large bush started out as several small shoots.

If you have bare dirt it washes away in the rains so I put in my new favorite plant - Mani (peanut) It has taken over the slope and hides the water lines also. The silver hedge is growing too. This is a hard spot since we cannot water without dragging 400 feet of hose down there. It has been slow to cover since I plant little bits at a time and water with soda bottles full of water. Now that it is getting wetter it is really taking off!

The new plan is to replace the lawn (hard to mow) with mani so we don't have to mow along the lower driveway. I have figured out how to do this and make it work. I take cuttings from the Mani patch in the wall...put them in pots until they have roots...dig out some lawn..plant them on a rainy day and it is working! I tried direct planting starts but they really need roots or they just dry up. This seems to be working out well. I can't dig out all the grass yet or I'll lose the soil so it is patchwork right now - pain to mow.

We've also got Mani is the back and it is spreading and stabilizing the slope there too. It is nice to have something that just requires occasional weeding. As it grows it becomes less effort.

It's a nice, cool, soft spot for the cats to hang out in too!

As part of the arboretum plan I have started to put flowers or ground covers under trees. I put Mani under the Ylang ylang and as it spreads I keep a dirt strip between the wild weed-whack part and the cultivated part.


My orchid bloomed. It is so colorful and a surprise as I look around the yard. Things are growing...you can kind of see the plan...it is exciting to see fruit, and flowers, and actual trees!

Cueva Cucaracha (a Two-Part Blog Entry)

Ron, Bro, Jeff and I headed out to Cueva Cucaracha on Sunday. Ron wanted to take some temperature readings for comparison purposes - another caver had taken readings almost a year ago. Everyone we have spoken with has told horrifying tales of adventures in this one and most people only go here once and never again. In my mind I envisioned wall to wall cockroaches and cockroaches crawling under my shirt and in my ears etc etc. I imagined mounds and mounds of guano (like in Mucara). Visions of the dead pig from Cerdo Infierno even popped into mind. Things never are a bad as you can imagine them which is probably a good thing. This cave is near Isabela so it was a short drive for us. We walked under power lines and through a meadow and down into the creek bed before finding the hole. It was a 15 minute walk maybe and not treacherous. When we got to the hole we rigged the ropes and put on the harnesses.

Ron was the first down. Then we sent the packs. Once we were in the hole we took off the climbing gear so we wouldn't have to carry it.

Looking into the entrance is one thing, but going into it is another. You immediately feel the heat. This cave has 700,000 bats in it that all leave this small entrance every night. This entrance/exit is like going under a table only a little lower. Ron goes first with the tape measure. He has a temperature/humidity gauge on a stick (at the meter mark) and plans to measure every 10 meters until he gets to the bat room and hopes to go in to the bat room (didn't happen). Since taking readings and mapping are kind of slow procedures the rest of us wait outside until he is far enough along in the tunnel so the rest of us can scoot and not have to just be sitting there. We could feel heat rushing out of the cave like hot air coming out of an oven.

When we do enter, it is incredibly HOT! I am rarely if ever hot, and I have to say I had lots of ribbons of sweat dropping off my face. It was a little difficult to breathe and I found I was breathing a lot shallower. I didn't feel overheated, but I think maybe there are different gasses in that area - ammonia, carbon dioxide, and who knows what else from the decomposing bats, bat guano and cockroaches. It would be interesting to measure different gasses and try to figure that out. When I sat down (actually crouched so cockroaches wouldn't get in my pants) I would get dizzy standing up even when I stood slowly. Time seemed to be like it is in the Star Trek transport beams...a little glitchy.

We all were having a little trouble. Mainly from heat for the guys. Here the gauge reads only 93.9% humidity and only 90.8 degrees. That's why I think the oxygen levels are low in there. Those temperatures are not that extreme...at least on the outside. After taking these readings we had to move the tape measure so Bro went back for it and so did Jeff. Bro returned but Jeff decided he was done. He opted to sit outside the cave.

The walls of this cave were blanketed with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands bats. Our presence disturbed them so you can't really get and idea of the quantity of them from the pictures. I only took these 3 photos of bats because the flash really disturbed them and I didn't feel right about it no matter how much I wanted to document it. There were many dead bats on the floor, and I don't know if it was the time of year for babies...but most of the bats on this entry tunnel appeared to be young bats. Very pink and very small.

The sound and feel of bats flying by and into us was amazing. When Bro went back for the tape Ron and I sat with lights out so the bats would settle down. It didn't seem like they settled, but when our lights had to go on again there was an immediate rush of activity. People definitely disturb bats.

Look at the little beard and pretty pink body! It is like an old man face on a sci-fi body.

Bats were everywhere and unfortunately that means dead on the guano piles. This cave has the most life of any I have seen. Usually you find life at the entrance not far from light. This cave had a healthy ecosystem 3 hours deep into it. Here, unfortunately is a dead bat smorgasbord for a hungry cockroach.

The walls and floor were moving with cockroaches of all sizes. There were a lot of white ones which I don't believe are albino, simply molting. Ron confirmed this thought. Still, there were a lot of white ones and they were of good size.

We didn't enter the main bat room to take readings. It was seriously hot and hard to breathe so Ron, Bro and I opted to continue to the lower, cooler area. We got to a spot and dropped down, and then I scouted an area to drop further so we could go into the river. The tunnel to the right I think (but didn't explore) would go into the back part of the hot bat room. We went left. We got to a spot with a pool of water that Bro and Ron remembered going into to get to the river. I was looking and found a couple ways down. I got down and figured the other way would be easier for the guys (they are a little larger than I am) and it had a place to put a strap to hold onto. Here's Ron using that strap to climb down. The black area is what I will call the "bat stew" area.

The bat stew area was a pool of water with all kinds of dead bats and cockroaches floating in it. We needed to drop into this, bend down into the yuck up to the waist or shoulders and climb up into a larger, cleaner tunnel.

Bro is standing in the brew and I am still perched on a little ledge. I want to enter the stew at the last possible minute and get out of it fast. He is watching as Ron takes measurements. Then he bends down into the brew and goes through the hole. When I see him disappear I follow.

We come up in a clean, dry tunnel and I spot a piece of flagging tape - G1. Someone has mapped this section (Tom?). Ron takes some measurements until we run out of tape (328 feet I believe). He then abandons the tape and we get to a fork - left upstream or right downstream?
It is a good time to have lunch. I've got a headache from looking at head lamps and need to eat and drink. We then go right down little waterfalls. Even this far into the cave there is life. We saw a dozen or so crabs all scurrying from our lights and hiding under rocks. The water was very clear and there weren't any dead bats here so I am not sure what the food source is. I imagine that rain will sweep water through this area and bring some delightful things with it. (this continues with the next post)

Mas Cueva Cucaracha

After the crabs we head downstream and find it continues into some passages.

We head down the waterfalls and follow the water.It gets lower in spots but isn't what I would call "confined."

Some spots do require some bending and contortions. Then we are in a crack of sorts and the water is getting higher.

We have reached the end of the road for the day - a sump. There are plastic water bottles and plant debris floating here that have been brought in by the river. Makes you rethink all those plastic bottles, huh? Even if you toss them in the garbage they end up somewhere - we see a lot of crap deep underground. (I'm done with the sermon now) So does the river continue? Probably. Did we go there? No. It was supposed to be a thunderstorm type day and flash floods filling small tunnels is a definite concern. The decision was to leave the face mask in the pack and return.

Out we came.Back out the crack, up the river (saw flagging marked a-26 and b1), a left into the tunnel and back to the stew.

It was nice to have cool, clean water. It wasn't a cold cave but the water section was actually pleasant.

Back we went up the little waterfalls.

We saw snails, crabs, cockroaches, bats.

Then in the G-1 tunnel Ron yells for us to shut off the lights. We do and are amazed to see to bio luminescent spots glowing. Ron and Bro and I have never seen bio luminescence in a cave before. I am a beginner, but Ron and Bro have been in MANY caves over many years and haven't seen this. Here is what we saw...

When we put the lights back on we located what to the best of my googling is a click beetle Chalcolepidius elateridae. I have to compare my photo with the internet ones closer and we need to ask a biologist but this is what it looks like in the light. There was only one so I am wondering if it is a cockroach that is showing mating behavior that we just haven't ever looked for or seen. Either way it was exciting to see, makes us wonder and marvel and think about and gives us something to look for in other caves. It could be that we just never noticed before - that's what happened when I photographed a sea spider with egg sacks in Puget Sound waters. I couldn't do a dive after that withOUT seeing one. Hopefully this is an unusual find...
So was this a disgusting cave? No. Would I go back? In a heartbeat. Is there more to explore? Yes. Was it uncomfortable? In the hot area. The plan of attack would be to mosey real quick to the big bat room and explore fast, get out, and go further into the maze. Next time Jeff will have to come and just bypass the hot part.

After 2 Months...Back to Some Caves!

After two months of not being in a cave we were very excited when Tom Miller invited us to join a short expedition he had planned for a few of his students. We met this morning and headed to Cueva Los Barbudos and Cueva Monte Encantado. We picked up some good geology information listening in on his commentary and got to explore a couple caves we hadn't been to. This is the entrance/exit of Cueva Monte Encantado. This is a very large, open room with some other high bat rooms a little deeper in. The cave isn't very large, but has some nice formations and mainly lots of bats.

We saw a lot of life we don't see deep inside other caves...crickets and crabs and even a mammal.

There was one really large bat room with a couple side bat chambers. The smell was of burnt popcorn and the floor was a marshmallowy soft guano type floor.

Even though we were a fairly small group we managed to disturb the bats to the point where they were flying and chirping quite a bit. Tom collected a water sample for testing.

The mammal we saw was a rat - not something you find deep inside caves but since this is a large, open cavern area we saw him foraging for who knows what.

I think this area looked like creepy Halloween eyes...

The first bat area was large and after going through it there were a couple other chambers to the sides.

This is the opening to the first cave we visited - Cueva Monte Encantado. This cave was my kind of thing...low with what I call "coffin passages."

It started out with a scramble down a little hill. There was water kind of appearing and forming a little stream.

Then it got kind of low. This is where you practice lunge walking while crouched over...mainly people just had to get on their stomachs in the water.

Then it was kind of dry but still coffin-like with stomach crawling. I crab walked while hunched over. This is the kind of thing Jeff hates.

This is the stuff that is hard on the knees, wrists, fingers and neck. It takes some muscle effort to crawl around in odd positions.

It takes some body contortions as well!

Then we got to a sump and since Jeff and I left our packs mid way it was the end of the line since we didn't have masks to explore with. In the past there was a really dry year and supposedly the water was so low that cavers were able to crawl through this area and continue on for a bit. Not today though - this was the end!

So all in all it was a short, pleasant, interesting day. Tomorrow it is on to another cave - Cueva Cucaracha...everyone we talk to has been there once...and only once. Hmmmmmm