Using Tom's hand drawn map we hiked along a winding jungly path for a good 30 minutes before realizing that we weren't circling around the satellite like in the picture....after back tracking we found the right path and were soon hiking along a huge fence and looking down on the satellite dish. Before continuing on the path we passed a sign that said "Warning: The Tanama River is Dangerous. Inexperienced Persons should not go Alone". We kind of laughed at the sign before heading along the path, I mean Dana & I are experienced cavers and we had Tom's great advice to help us out....everything would be fine.
The hike through the jungle took us over the top of Cave #1 without us even realizing it as the cave is pretty massive. Following the path is the only easy way to get down to the river bed as the river is at the bottom of a good 200-300 foot gorge. The trail was relatively well marked with orange flagging on trees and all in all it took about another 2 hours to make it down to the river bed.
Once down at the river, we had to forge across 3 times in order to avoid a couple of waterfalls before making it to the entrance of Cave #1, the one that we had previously hiked over the top of. Tom had advised us that we should have to walk through half of the first cave before actually sitting down in our tubes and floating down river, but the water level was so elevated that we could easily put in ahead of the cave. According to Tom, if the water level was at this height we should not attempt to go through the 3rd and final cave because the water level would be too high.
We excitedly hopped on our rafts, turned on our caving lights and headed downstream. The current was fast flowing and entering the cave; it was hard to decide whether to look up at the tall ceiling of the cave with countless bats flying and making a commotion or to fearfully face upstream as our tubes flew through the Class III-IV rapids. I have been whitewater rafting several times before and knew that the first rule of rafting is to keep your feet up and float if you fall in such that you avoid trapping a foot in between rocks. Unfortunately, in the situation of tubing through a fast flowing stream in a dark cave with only an inflatable tube...the opposite instinct took hold whenever I fell off the raft. Luckily, my feet never got caught on the rocky river bed and I was able to hop back onto my tube each time. The experience was one of the most exhilarating of my life so far and stupid in many ways, but I'm sure that was half the fun.
So, after successfully making it through cave #1, we took a few minutes to be silly and do some handstands. Cave #2 was almost right downstream of #1 and according to our "map" there was a trail going over the top of #2 that we would be using to hike back out to the cars after crossing through it. We were disappointed that we weren't going to be able to go through the 3rd cave, but since we were caving in another country we were taking all of the precautions that we could.
So, the water in between the caves had surprisingly dropped from the fast flowing currents in Cave #1 to a dead halt. Once we paddled our way over to the caves entrance we discovered why. Cave #2 was completely clogged with dead trees, debris, and what smelled like some decomposing animals...the smell was horrible! We searched the rock wall in front of the cave for a way to climb over the cave and up to the path, but there was no safe way to climb up to the top of the cave - we were going to have to go through.
We spent a good 30 minutes on top of our tubes trying to slowly break through the clogged debris, but the going was so slow that we realized that we were going to have to crawl over the top of the floating mess. Holding onto our tubes for flotation we slowly moved across the debris...I could manage to stand on top of some of the bigger trees for several seconds before they would sink too deep. Occasionally, the floating debris would break apart and I would sink through the fragments and this was more than terrifying...I did have at least one major freak out moment when I sunk through the the logs started to move back around me. After that I just crawled over the debris as fast as humanely possible and the three of us made it out ok. This was actually much, MUCH more terrifying than tubing through Cave #1 and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I was out. Dana and I ordered Adam to turn around, and we were quick to strip off our clothes and dive back into the water to wash away all of the disgusting wood chips and whatever else had managed to stick to us and make its way into our clothing.
So, this is where things got even more interesting for us. The map that Tom drew for us showed a path that went up and over Cave #2, so we crawled up and attempted to find something that looked remotely like a path....um, if anybody thinks that the most wicked compilation of roots with giant gnarly holes that I fell into (twice) = a path...then we might have found it. The jungle was so thick on top of the cave that there was no way that we could pass through it.
We made what we thought was an educated decision and followed the river downstream until we could easily crawl up and out of the gorge. Most of it was a cliff so we walked a ways downstream before literally crawling up through the jungle on the right side of the river. Going up to the right was the opposite side from the cars, but since this was the most climbable side we decided that it was best. We made it to the top of the climb, literally crawling up the mountainside through thick jungle, and began weaving our way upstream. We always tried to remain within hearing distance of the rushing water below, but far enough away that we wouldn't have the possibility of falling down the gorge.
Well, we hiked and hiked and hiked, found an ancient wall in the middle of the thick jungle and hiked some more. We were getting incredibly thirsty and hungry, but were doing our best to save all of the water and food we had with us since this situation was beginning to look more dire by the minute. All of the earlier adventures had taken longer than expected and now with the brutal hike we were getting really worried about making it back to the car. We were moving pretty dang slowly through the jungle as every couple steps one of us would uninvitedly trip or occasionally slip and have to grab onto trees to keep from sliding down the steep slope (that was me) and we were literally crawling up and down - trying to remain far enough from the cliff, but close enough that we would notice a path. We figured that the worst thing that could possibly happen would be for one of us to get injured, so going slow was how we were going to be ok. It was taking forever to cover even a little bit of ground so we started logically making a plan for what we would do if we had to sleep there...
Well, as we continued rambling through the denseness I began picking fiddleheads (the curly cues that are ferns, before the ferns uncurl) because Bear Grillz taught me that I could eat them and we were starting to get pretty shaky from the amount of activity and little consumption of food.
Unfortunately the sun sets around 6 pm...hahaha, yeah...so, even though we had our headlamps on there was no way with how clutzy we were being in the day that we were going to do any night hiking. So, well rolling out our flat river rat tubes and laid them onto the jungle floor and Dana accidentally dropped hers and it went rolling down the hill and dropped into the river gorge below. Yeah, this little bit of flat ground was a great place to sleep...we decided to sleep with our helmets on. For dinner the 3 of us split 1/2 of a cliff bar and some of the fiddleheads - tasty! Dana was starting to shiver a ton, so without question we put her in the middle and formed a 3 person spoon...even though we were on the nice tropical island, we had not dried out from our swimming and tubing earlier in the day and when the temperature dropped to about 60 - that was definitely cold enough. Dana was actually starting to get pretty shaky so we all cuddled up tight and talked about how we would make our way our in the morning.
In the distance we could see the red flashing light of one of the three control towers surrounding the Arecibo Observatory, so using this light we gained an idea of which way we would need to hike and approximately how far. We also discussed every worst case scenario situation and I tried to impose whatever "wilderness" survival knowledge I had to make the two of them more comfortable even though I was pretty fricken scared myself. As we were talking we would occasionally hear a low flying airplane over the top of us and even though we were under the tree cover we would all turn on our headlamps to flash mode, just in case there was even a possibility of attracting them.
We all decided it would be good to attempt to get a little bit of sleep so we all tried to sleep and I maybe got an hour or two (realize there was darkness from 6 pm to 6 am) between having to rotate spoon positions every 45 minutes or so because I really only worked as the little spoon and Dana had to be in the middle to stay unhypothermic. Occasionally we would hear another airplane and turn on our lights again and we turned them on even more frequently after freaking out about another LARGE insect crawling on top of us. Needless to say, it was a very sleepless night.....
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