Entrance to Los Chorros

Day2 it can be a challenge to sleep in Puerto rico at night with the coqi frogs chirping away all night. I am not sure how many hours of sleep we got but we had to wake up 530 Atlantic time which is 330 AM central time so we could get to the other side of the island to meet up with the cavers to go caving. We got up, striked camp, and started meandering our way down the mountain to the main highway. Map quest was telling me one way to get to Arecibo, Pats Google maps was telling another way to get there, and with my experience being in Puerto rico I knew I had to trick my GPS. It makes driving interesting when GPS tells us to get off on a road and it is a completely different road than we are supposed to be on. Plus there GPS told us to go down roads that are not even there to get to a destination. We worked our way on the highway towards san juan so we can go west and ran into a toll system that we found to be very confusing.

Los Chorros Puerto Rico

Not only do they charge a lot of money but there are 4 different kinds of toll systems where they will give you a card if in replacement of giving you change, or you have to buy a pass to go through the tolls. I should have just activated the toll at the car rental and got the insurance too.We made it to Arecibo an hour early so we had to chance to casually prepare for the caving phase of the trip and organize everything in the car. Jeff Kruse showed up to the meet location and I followed him to the first cave, Los Chorros.

Boa at the entrance of Los Chorros

Los chorros has two beautiful entrances but one of them requires the use of rope to enter the system.

We parked our car and Jeff started to explain to me that last time American cavers went into this system they were getting shot at. On top of that parking our cars at any cave we are taking a risk of our cars getting broken into so we had to bring our valuables and everything else is put in the trunk. 

We came this far so we walked up the hill following the waterfall entrance and climbed up into the mouth of the cave. A Boa constrictor was welcoming us at the entrance to the cave, there were snakes, crabs, the “mango” spider (which is a large spider the size of both of my hands), and scorpions. 

 

We got into this active water system and the temp inside was 75 degrees with 100% humidity and the water was 65 degrees. It felt really warm inside this cave. We started our traverse and the wall passages were lined with formations from flowstone to stalactites and stalagmites. We had to wade in water and go under some small sections to where the cave opened up into walking river cave passage. Bats were flying gall over the place as they squeaked flew in a chaotic frenzy yet they were aware not to run into anything.

Crab in Los Chorros Puerto Rico

We meandered around breakdown and got to a section where we had to climb up into an upper passage where water carved out tube like sharp formations under our feet. It’s still amazes me how water has the power to slowly evolve rocks into some of the most amazing features over millennia.

Scorpion in Los Chorros Puerto Rico

We continued down the passages enjoying the features of the cave and came to the sump. The sump has been recorded as a dive before with dive line but I was not able to get too much more information about that. We started our traverse out of the cave and went down another couple side passages which were even narrower than the previous canyons and the torrents of water raging through these small canyon passages have created a mosaic of well defined and sharp sculptures which were beautiful to observe. I could hear my clothes tearing as I would pass by some of these formations but we walked over small waterfalls and made it to the other entrance. It was nice to see that our cars were still one piece too.

Los Chorros Puerto Rico

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