The Second cave we went to visit is called Cueva Mucolitos which is situated next to a cliff face where we had our hand line set that helped us descend the ledge and onto the landslide wash where these two caves are located.    After going to Cueva De Los Minerales, I entered the fissure cracked cave that seemed to be more of a passageway created by the way the boulders above and below us were situated.  Some members of Anthros were still inside surveying the cave so I also wanted to go inside to help with the survey.

Snottites inside Cueva Mucolitos Irazu Volcano Costa Rica

 Inside this cave, there was sulfur on the walls similar to the mineral cave but this cave had Snottites or "snotties" which are soda straw looking formations that are gooey and thriving with extremophile bacterial activity.  Some of the Snottites had some kind of black insects crawling around within the area where the Snottites were located.

I thought to myself of the maroon/purple bacteria pads that I have observed on the bottom of lake huron thrive on the consumption of sulfur as a means of survival. Here inside this chamber of a volcano we have little black insects able to deal with sulfur and other elements that most life on this planet might find on a scale of irritating to deadly.  How can these small insects survive this envivroment?  One of the survey cavers bumped into one of the snottites and it jiggled like jelly. The team was conducting a survey or a "topographica" of this cave so I stayed to help with the survey stations until they were able to complete this project. I exited the cave after the completeion of the survey stations and found that everyone else was in the mineral cave. Than Scott came back stating that he found a third cave! He went back up to the main cave and I told him I was going to go down and check out this cave to photo document the discovery. I descend down over loose breakdown and a very talus slope till I reach a bend and observe another entrance on a sheer cliff below us.

READ ABOUT THE THIRD CAVE DISCOVERY ON THIS VOLCANO :

http://adamhaydock.blogspot.com/2014/05/cueva-espanado-irazu-volcano-costa-rica.html

THE MAIN EXPEDITION INTO CUEVA MINERALES : http://adamhaydock.blogspot.com/2014/05/cuevas-de-los-minerales-irazu-volcano.html



Snottites inside Cueva Mucolitos Irazu Volcano Costa Rica