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!

Cueva Zumbo or Underworld Sculptural Exhibit

The day for us began at 5:30 am with a drive to Florida. The cave is technically in Ciales but is accessed from Florida. We met up with Ivan who is always a good friend, joined the larger group and then proceeded to the gatekeeper's house (Pipo?). This gate was put in by neighbors who were tired of junk cars being taken into the jungle and left there. The SEPRI caving group has a good relationship with the neighbors here who are very helpful and gracious.

Jose Morales gave another briefing about the dangers of this particular "wet" cave (hypothermia, falling and breaking body parts, sharp rocks, getting tired etc). We then consolidated into several cars so we could drive past the gate a half mile or more to start the hike in. The group was large (30 people) but consisted of really good cavers for the most part. There were a few people who had a tough time with what Jeff and I consider a walk. It was a hike that could have taken maybe 40 minutes if you kept up a pace and were in shape. It meandered up and down hills in the jungle, not really on a real trail, and as always the journey in the jungle was a big part of the adventure. The elevation gain was 1000 feet maybe. It was hot and humid. As with all the caves we have visited there is no way you would know that it was there unless you went with someone who had been before many times. We wandered through the jungle for 1 3/4 hours and Ivan had the good sense to flag trees on our journey with bright pink flagging tape. Bro was doing the same behind us. Little did we know how helpful this would be on the way out!

We wandered around and found all kinds of fruit on the ground - pomerosa, chinas, and as always lots of bromeliads, philodendrons and flowers. Then we stopped to listen for water. There was old tagging on trees and that definitely assisted us in finding the opening. Listening for the river was key - even though the river was underground!

We got to the small hole and put the wetsuits and harnesses on so we could do the rappel in. It was a short rappel, maybe 25 or 30 feet I think. It was a little awkward with the rocks. Once everyone was huddled in the small area we left harnesses and climbing gear behind, put on life vests and proceeded. Here's a climber rappelling in.


When everyone was ready we saw the first people taking backpacks off, tossing them down into the water with a plop and then squeezing down this crazy little crack! You couldn't reach the river so you just had to let go and plop into the water. It was a crazy start to a surreal cave - our reality for about 5 1/2 hours or so.
After the shock of that entrance we were facing this unreal sculpted area that seemed more like a Disneyland ride than reality. We floated in the river and into the mouth of the rock not even believing the shapes and forms the rock was sculpted into.


Sometimes we would need to float (water was over our heads) and other times we could walk a little. Here we could kind of stand in the water and bend around formations to follow the water down deeper into the ground.

Most of the cave however involved kind of tip-toeing on these really sharp sculpted rock areas. It is hard to see how 3 dimensional this is, but we would be stepping on little spires of sorts or kind of like barrel rims with water running 6 - 15 feet below. There wasn't any way to get there (except falling) but you could see it and hear it clearly. So like characters in a Doctor Seuss book we tip toed for hours stretching our arms as wide as they could go to stabilize ourselves.

Some places would kind of drop down and we would have to hang by fingers and lower ourselves as close to the water as we could get before simply dropping down. When this would happen you didn't really know if there were sharp spires in the water or not...how deep the water was... and how you were going to get back up! But down and down we went squeezing, dropping, tip toeing, hanging our way into the darkness. We went on and on until it kind of ended. Some of the more experienced cavers contemplated and we found out later that they did submerge in the river and emerge on the other side of the blocked area by going through a sump/siphon area that is very dangerous. I was kind of chilled and started to think about how tough it would be to be climbing up all the things we dropped down so we made the decision to take our time going back out while they figured out if it was safe enough to go-to-the-other-side. This was a good decision I think. Now we were at the lowest point and had to travel kind of up to get back. It is easy to forget where you have come from and how you got where you are. Things looked very different coming out. Jeff is looking for a way to get up since the river goes under rock at this point. No other way except up to get out.

After some pulling with the arms and stretching with the legs to hoist our way up we need to find another way to get further up. Maybe the way is in this hole?

Some of these spots were hard since I just didn't have enough arm to span the areas and although I am very flexible the leg just stopped a little too soon in some areas. I really had to think and plan my progress. Since I am kind of small I had no trouble in areas other people had trouble with, but I did have trouble where they didn't. Thankfully everyone helped out to make sure we could all get where we needed to get.

When we arrived at the hole out it was dark and we were losing light. We got the harnesses on and climbed the ropes out just as the rain started and we lost light. Now I was cold. I had an extra fleecy shirt for this reason, but my dry bag flooded with all the dropping and everything was wet. We left with the first group and unfortunately didn't get to say goodbye to many people. When we hiked back it was dark and we looked with our headlamps for the flagging tape to make sure we were on the "trail." The trail was now more of a river and looked completely different in the dark. Absolutely crazy! This whole adventure was crazy crazy. It didn't even seem real. When Jeff and I changed, got in the car and drove back we didn't get home until 10:30pm. The next day we were both really sore in ways we haven't been before. The tops of my thighs and muscles near my clavicles kept me laying on our wonderful Temperpedic mattress longer than usual in the morning. Climbing steps hurt. Lifting my arms hurt. We both had weird bruising patterns on our arms. Then David called and we went for an 80 minute dive at the cuevas in Isabela (Shacks). The walk in the gear was slow but moving in the water helped loosen things up. Monday however was a different story...

Fantastical Formations (things this spectacular deserve a made up word!)

All through out this cave there were odd sculptures on a fantastic scale that you just can't understand from a photograph. I call this one the "double fountain" since it makes me think of the fountains that just burble out a small coating of water continuously. Of course I could call it "fountain entrance" since we floated between the two to continue on.

The majority of the cave we were balancing on top of the lips of these formations or sculptures. It was like standing on the rims of barrels, and what it hard to tell from the photo is that the river is about 6-15 feet below where we balance. It was like being in a video game or like some made-up world in a Doctor Seuss book!

In three spots that I recall we found what looked like bits of wood embedded in the walls. We were told that these are dugong fossils. On the way out Ron pointed out what looked like a vertebrate. The walls look like soft sandstone but they are not. This stuff was very very hard and sharp.

This might give a better impression of the 3 dimensional quality of this place. These are the formations we walked on for about 5 1/2 hours. We walked, climbed, hung by fingers, dropped several feet into the river below, stretched to span the chasm...we used a lot of muscles we didn't know we had!

This shows the little rims we walked on. Some of these pools were bathtub sized, some were like sinks, some had water rushing through them and others didn't.

On the way down we hung by fingers and plopped into the water after dropping backpacks. On the way back we had to do some major stretching and climbing and figuring out to get back up. A lot of times we had to balance and hold on with one hand, push a pack up to a person reaching as low as they could who was balancing as well before we could proceed.

A lot of the cave looked like swiss cheese but three dimensional. The scale of the place was just huge! The water below was sometimes over our heads and we floated with our life vests to the next spot we could climb.

This cave was the best ever (but they are all different and all interesting)! It was surreal the whole time from the first moment when we had to remove and drop packs to wedge down into the first hole to the whole 3D video game bizarreness of the landscape. On the way down we just kept going and going trying to keep a good pace and not block other people. We didn't really look at things because we were just trying to plan the next step. On the way back we were able to take it slower and really look at things closely - because we had the time and we had to do some real figuring out in order to climb our way up and out!

A huge thanks to SEPRI for inviting us, Jose Morales and whoever else helped organize this trip and all the other people we were able to enjoy this trip with! Can't wait til the next one!!!!!