Well, if you couldn't tell...we might have had a wee bit to drink for our "New Years" celebrations and woke up with plans to meet up with Caver Tom and his wife for some caving. Somehow with the confusion of the night before and the high tide....Dana had managed to misplace the keys. We searched the beach up and down, managing to find Dana's missing flip flop...but the keys were nowhere in sight. Assuming that they had been washed away to Poseidon we gave Tom a call and explained that we would be a bit late in meeting them and then called the rental car company to come drop off a set of keys. Dana decided that she would take a nap in the car and wait for the keys to arrive and Adam and I went to grab some breakfast.
Adam and my timing was perfect and the keys were dropped minutes after we made it back to the car. Right as we were about to pull away, an older Puerto Rican walked up holding....our missing set of keys. We have NO idea where he could have possibly found them since we were positive that we had searched every inch of beach, but our lost keys had returned.
We met Tom and his wife at a small town right outside of Guajataca National Park and followed them up the mountain to park on the side of the road. We all grabbed our caving and tubing gear and hiked into the jungle. The National Park services had recently published a new map of the park which included the location of Effrain Lopez Cave - which Tom was very opposed to because of vandalism in other more touristy caves in the area. He had taken it upon himself to hide the trail to the cave and was more than happy that the three of us just walked right on past the "trail". Once pointed in the right direction we walked down to the decent sized mouth of the short, horizontal cave. Tom got out his surveying gear and I was put in charge of the laser pointer that would help measure the size of the cave. The cave is relatively small, but very interesting since the ceilings are full of pockets that have been slowly worn away by the bats that reside within.
After the survey was complete, the 5 of us hiked back through the jungle and down to a canal that had been built to supply water to the town of Isabela on the north of the island. We blew up our inflatable tubes and the 2 Puerto Ricans donned their wetsuits before we set out floating down the canal that ran literally through the middle of the beautiful jungle. I got the fortunate position in the front and as we floated through the tunnels and underneath the bridges this put me in charge of unintentionally clearing the spiders out of the way for everyone else....lucky me. Some of the tunnels were especially long and curvy so you couldn't even see the exit - these were significantly more fun and terrifying to ride through with our lights off....and slightly reminiscent of a Willy Wonka boat ride.
Because of Tom and his wife's generousness for showing us around the jungle and even offering up their grass for us to pitch our tent that night - we offered to take them out to dinner. We ate at a local fast food type restaurant that they insisted had some of the best Mofongo - fried yuca or plaintains mushed together.
After dinner we followed them back to their house and Tom patiently drew us a map for our cave tubing excursion that we were planning for the next day down the Rio Tanama.
Sorry, lack of pictures due to the water activities....
Showing posts with label Guajataca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guajataca. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2009
Puerto Rico - Day 4 - Cave Day!
We woke up early from our uber exciting New Years. Having gotten directions to several caves from Caver Tom who is a Professor of Geology at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez over the phone, we set out Bosque De Guajataca to see what we could find.
Driving into the park, the roads approached a new degree of terrifying...dirt roads with cliff drop offs on one side made for maybe 1 1/2 cars to be able to safely drive down them. Our 1st cave of the trip, we named "Car Cave" as we were able to drive our rental car partway into it. The cave was rather insignificant in size, but entertaining enough when you drove into it.
We found parking next to the visitor's center that is under construction and got into our caving gear and ready for our couple mile hike to Cueva Viento. Along the path Adam found a small cave on the left side of the trail and Dana and I followed him down the small hole into an interesting small caves with a ton of formations for such a small space. We found another much larger entrance to the cave which exited into the thick jungle.
Cueva Viento turned out to be a very well traveled cave with a circular staircase going down into the cave that would have originally been a good 50 foot rappel. The cave was mostly just one big room, but the most interesting part was our 1st siting of a Gordo - a huge spider, scorpion looking insect about the size of a softball. Not sure if they are poisonous or not, but certainly wasn't going to tempt it.
We hiked back along the trail to our car and headed out of the park to find Infierno - another cave that Caver Tom had recommended. Infierno was a great cave with a great skinny muddy passage off to the left that was blocked by a crab - the gatekeeper of that section of cave. We ended up knee deep in mud in some sections and had a ton of fun in the less traveled cave.
After our fun caving adventure we grabbed a delicious dinner of ham and cheese sandwiches (mine just cheese) and set up camp in Guajataca just up a small dirt road from the visitors center that was still under construction. Now, we weren't technically suppose to camp here...but we had a great time drinking our Don Q and juice drinks and making sure to turn off our headlamps whenever we heard cars driving along the crazy dirt road.
Driving into the park, the roads approached a new degree of terrifying...dirt roads with cliff drop offs on one side made for maybe 1 1/2 cars to be able to safely drive down them. Our 1st cave of the trip, we named "Car Cave" as we were able to drive our rental car partway into it. The cave was rather insignificant in size, but entertaining enough when you drove into it.
We found parking next to the visitor's center that is under construction and got into our caving gear and ready for our couple mile hike to Cueva Viento. Along the path Adam found a small cave on the left side of the trail and Dana and I followed him down the small hole into an interesting small caves with a ton of formations for such a small space. We found another much larger entrance to the cave which exited into the thick jungle.
Cueva Viento turned out to be a very well traveled cave with a circular staircase going down into the cave that would have originally been a good 50 foot rappel. The cave was mostly just one big room, but the most interesting part was our 1st siting of a Gordo - a huge spider, scorpion looking insect about the size of a softball. Not sure if they are poisonous or not, but certainly wasn't going to tempt it.
We hiked back along the trail to our car and headed out of the park to find Infierno - another cave that Caver Tom had recommended. Infierno was a great cave with a great skinny muddy passage off to the left that was blocked by a crab - the gatekeeper of that section of cave. We ended up knee deep in mud in some sections and had a ton of fun in the less traveled cave.
After our fun caving adventure we grabbed a delicious dinner of ham and cheese sandwiches (mine just cheese) and set up camp in Guajataca just up a small dirt road from the visitors center that was still under construction. Now, we weren't technically suppose to camp here...but we had a great time drinking our Don Q and juice drinks and making sure to turn off our headlamps whenever we heard cars driving along the crazy dirt road.
Puerto Rico - Day 3 - The green road, pinas con pina colada, y the lamest New Years Eve ever!
We woke up with the sun, and admired our awesome camp spot as we packed up our stuff. We caught a muy inexpensive cab ride across the island in order to make it on the early morning ferry back to the mainland. It had been a hard debate whether to stay one more night in what was paradise if you could overlook the extreme tourism of the place.
We had made our plan the night before - we would stop at Wal-mart (yes, they are everywhere) to pick up some food & supplies before driving as far as we felt like it on the green road that runs right through the middle of PR, before heading down to Ponce - the 2nd biggest city on the island to spend our New Years Eve.
The green road turned out to be the most beautiful and dangerous road that I had ever been on. The winding roads that went up and down the mountainous land had hairpin turns where you would often be met nearly head on with somebody winding their way down or up the mountain. We slowly accustomed ourselves to the near collisions around every bend, and enjoyed the scenery.
After deciding that we had been traveling on the green road for long enough, we made our way south and came upon a lively small town that were already in full swing of their New Years Eve celebration mid-day. We joined in on the fun for a little bit, enjoying our gigantic pina coladas con pina with sprinkles, umbrellas, and a couple cherries on top!
We explored a couple of beach towns along our way to Ponce - all of which were near deserted. We arrived in Ponce around duck, and started driving around to explore the town only to discover that Ponce was very much so deserted as well! The only place we found in the city that was jumping - was the local Hilton casino that was SOLD OUT for the night. Feeling sad that our NYE plans were falling through we decided to start driving in the direction of Bosque De Guajataca where we were planning on heading the next day.
Extremely hungry, we pulled off at Guayanilla where we had dinner at the fabulous El Dragon - Chinese food complete with french fries.
We discovered a small hotel at the exit and since it was getting pretty late we decided that we might as well hole up for the night and except our defeat of our hoped for NYE extravaganza. We did our best to celebrate with some delicious Modelo, Don Q (of course), and our new set of PR playing cards.
We had made our plan the night before - we would stop at Wal-mart (yes, they are everywhere) to pick up some food & supplies before driving as far as we felt like it on the green road that runs right through the middle of PR, before heading down to Ponce - the 2nd biggest city on the island to spend our New Years Eve.
The green road turned out to be the most beautiful and dangerous road that I had ever been on. The winding roads that went up and down the mountainous land had hairpin turns where you would often be met nearly head on with somebody winding their way down or up the mountain. We slowly accustomed ourselves to the near collisions around every bend, and enjoyed the scenery.
After deciding that we had been traveling on the green road for long enough, we made our way south and came upon a lively small town that were already in full swing of their New Years Eve celebration mid-day. We joined in on the fun for a little bit, enjoying our gigantic pina coladas con pina with sprinkles, umbrellas, and a couple cherries on top!
We explored a couple of beach towns along our way to Ponce - all of which were near deserted. We arrived in Ponce around duck, and started driving around to explore the town only to discover that Ponce was very much so deserted as well! The only place we found in the city that was jumping - was the local Hilton casino that was SOLD OUT for the night. Feeling sad that our NYE plans were falling through we decided to start driving in the direction of Bosque De Guajataca where we were planning on heading the next day.
Extremely hungry, we pulled off at Guayanilla where we had dinner at the fabulous El Dragon - Chinese food complete with french fries.
We discovered a small hotel at the exit and since it was getting pretty late we decided that we might as well hole up for the night and except our defeat of our hoped for NYE extravaganza. We did our best to celebrate with some delicious Modelo, Don Q (of course), and our new set of PR playing cards.
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