DAY 6-CUEVA PERDIDA
January 23, 2015
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| Carlos Artiguez in the White Room Cueva Perdida |
We got up early to meet up with Carlos at the Texaco on
Route 10 near Cueva Ventana and Carlos mentioned that he was running a bit
late, so we stopped by Cueva Ventana to see if we could visit the cave for a
bit.
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| Cueva Ventana from the bottom |
I went to Ventana a few years back and
paid 2 dollars to walk on the property to see this cave which consisted of two large rooms and the famous karst
window that overlooks the valley below.
We walk up to find out that now the price is 10.70 “Tax included” which comes
with a “Tour Guide”. Now when we were waiting for Bro to show up, There were people going up in suits and piles of kids
falling out of mini buses just to run up to take the “Tour” to visit the cave.
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| Cueva Ventana from the bottom |
I understand the whole making money thing,
and the tour thing, but it was depressing to see that this place has become a
tourist trap of sorts.
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| Valley into the Mogote Mountians |
On the flip side,
it might protect that cave a bit more instead of the free-for-all it was but I
can only hope that these tour companies invest in conservation efforts and also
contribute to the conservation efforts that a lot of caves in Puerto Rico desperately need
in order protect these environments.
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| Entrance to Cueva Perdida |
Previous Trip to Cueva Ventana: http://adamhaydock.blogspot.com/2014/07/puerto-rico-to-death-valley.html
Finally, we met up with bro and followed him to the landowner’s
property where Perdida was located. We got a chance to talk with the landowner
and it appears that there are hundreds of caves in his area including one cave
with Taino artifacts.
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| Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
We set out for Perdida and follow the GPS until it starts
taking us in a bit of a different direction than we needed to go.
Carlos yells for us to double back as there is a trail that leads right
to the entrance of perdida and we are going in the wrong direction....nice!! We get to the entrance of Perdida and we are
about 50ft off from the way point that I had for it, which is not too bad.
Perro is near the entrance but we didn’t have any ropes to rap into the sink
hole entrance so we entered perdida and crawled through a passage until we got
to the main stream passage. This cave
reminded me of Dog hill cave but this cave was a lot more fluted instead of just
one section.
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| typical stream passage in Cueva Perdida |
We start to go upstream and I snap a few pics of Carlos on a
bench area formation room.
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| Carlos Artiguez in Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
We continue on passing by some flowstone formations and
interesting and well defined dugon fossils which appeared to me to be a vertebrae
and some rib bones in a cluster.
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| Fossilized Dugon Bones in Cueva Perdida |
We go up and around some formations in the river passage and
walk through a few rooms until we got to a lower section of the cave where we
had to crawl in the water a bit.
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| Carlos going upstream in Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
It felt
pretty good to be in this water since the cave temp is around 75 degrees and
100 percent humidity, so the water cooled my body off a bit and kept us in a
great condition.
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| Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
Carlos began to talk about a room that is just up ahead and
about how this room is completely white. They call it the
“White Room” and there are a lot of formations abound in this room. We crawl up and poke through some smaller passages
until we see a window with some white formations.
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| Carlos Artiguez in Cueva Perdida |
We all climb up around
10-15ft and get into this beautiful room with these impressive white drapery and
stalactite formations hanging from the walls.
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| The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
I was really impressed with this and before I got my camera out, Carlos
told me to go around into the next room so I walked lightly over and into the following
room and noticed that is room is 4 times the size with pure white formations covering
the walls and ceiling.
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| The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
In my opinion,
the center piece to this room was a skinny stalagmite that stood 7+ feet tall
and the width was no more than 2 inches across.
It was amazing to see there was one in each room.
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| Carlos in the White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
I set up some pictures for Carlos and others as I have never
seen pictures of this White Room in Cueva Perdida, before so I am glad to be
sharing them with the world.
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| Adam Haydock in The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
The beauty
of the Caves in Puerto Rico never stops to amaze me even as I spoil myself with
visiting these fascinating and exotic geological karst environments.
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| Adam Haydock The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
After a while we started to head out of the cave and back
track the way we came in.
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| The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
We stopped to check out a side passage but either we were
sumped out or the passage or another section might have collapsed.
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| The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
It is also possible we were not in the right
place to find another extension to this cave as it was quite mazy, hence the
name Perdida “Lost cave”, but we had a
blast visiting this cave and getting a chance to cave with Carlos “Bro”, and a chance to
share the experience in one of his favorite caves was a great time.
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| Carlos in The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico |
The connection to
Perro is another “must do” traverse and going out the downstream exit was
another option but we were running out of time so we left and went back to the
hotel for another night’s sleep and prep for the grand finale, Juan Neives!!
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| The White Room Cueva Perdida Puerto Rico FLICKR: https://www.flickr.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/sets/72157650007541258/ |
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