ADAM HAYDOCK

The Next day Tom was going to join us to finish the survey of Maplanche but he ended up having some other business to take care of so we decided to take it easy and go to the Dry Forest in Guanica. 

Cueva Murcielago Puerto Rico

Guanica is situated in the south west corner of Puerto Rico which has a desert environment including cactus and other rocky features that you would find in typical deserts.

Cueva Murcielago Puerto Rico

There is also a cave that I wanted to visit here called MURCIELAGO so we headed out and made it to the trailhead in pretty good time. 

Cueva MURCIELAGO Puerto Rico

We hiked up the trail and followed the side path that pretty much took us to the entrance of the cave. 

Cueva Murcielago Puerto Rico

 There are a number of entrances here,  but we decided to do the climb down entrance which dropped us right into the the open air cave. 

Cueva Murcielago Puerto Rico

It was a short but interesting cave in its on right as it had a few collapsed entrances, skylights, and bats that live in the corners of the cave.   There was a guano lake that was something we tried to avoid as much as possible but other than that, the cave was a nice visual in the dry forest.

Cueva Murcielago Puerto Rico

 We snapped a few pictures and exited the cave to hang out at the beach and relax a bit before we headed to the hotel for the night and chill for the next days activities.

Once I got back to the car,  I packed up and we got some food in town. Afterwards we drove to the toro negro forest where we were in the clouds and this is where she got really sick.  We stopped the car to chill and relax and ended up getting another hotel for the night so she could sleep it off.

We drive past the Camuy commercial cave entrance and go down another twisting road to the small road with a 50-55 degree slope  straight up to the landowners property where we parked and got ready for the caves.  I talked to the landowners and they were nice enough to allow us to park and visit the two caves near their property. Cueva Evaporada and Humo are some of my all time favorite caves!!

 Cueva Evaporada has a very impressive entrance which takes almost 20 minutes to get down and leave the light zone. It has a large trunk passage that has a room with a karst window, a micro forest in a upper level open air sink hole, and some more flowstone passage that leads to a breakdown pile and the end of the cave. 



Cueva Evaporada Puerto Rico

This is a fragment of a cave system that use to feed  into the camuy cave system and use to be connected to Cueva del humo. Humo has a similar entrance and also has large trunk passage that extended into a large canyon passage and continues down into a lake, has side passages, and a tyrolean traverse section that connects to Angeles cave which connects to the camuy system. This cave is one of the larger systems in all of Puerto Rico but we were running out of time and had to get into this system before the sun went down so we could make it back to Tom’s house.  We hike through thick vine overgrowth and into the mogote’s.  After entering the mogotes, we traverse around and up to a saddle that took us down into the sink where the two caves exist. First, we went to Evaporada and started out hike down the 200ft entrance and around to where one of my favorite views is located looking out of the cave from within.

Cueva Evaporada Puerto Rico

We continued around some massive boulders and entered a massive trunk passage that extended to the karst window room where we took a couple of pictures. I love this cave.  The massive rooms and the echos from the bats and crickets make this cave and Puerto Rico caves so interesting to me.  The development of life in such a remote place ponders my mind as to how adaptive life can be in such extreme conditions . 

We head out of Evaporada and head over to Humo to hike down this 200 ft entrance with a bit more challenge due to the boulders and the slippery conditions.  We get to the bottom level and I shine our lights up into the ceiling to watch hundreds of bat fly down the passage and into other rooms where they hide.  There might even have been thousands of bats!! Their wings made a distinct sound as they flew in colonies at the top of the ceiling passage. We climb up to the top of the formation section and continued to hike down up and around massive ancient flowstone formations and other karst features. We went through a small connection room and popped out into the top of the canyon passage where the cave continued on and down into a small lake.  Divers have pushed this sump before but I can not confirm what they have reported from their dive operation.   We ended up turning around so we could have enough time to make it to Tom’s house and I should have take a few pics of this particular trip but I already took pics of Humo on the last trip.  If I ever come back to do the through trip to Angeles cave or a dive, I will be sure to take some more pics of this wonderful place.

I have been wanting to get out to Hawaii, China, Borneo, and South America for quite some time now but Puerto Rico keeps dragging me back every year and now here I am, back again, on my 5^th year visiting Puerto Rico.  I absolutely love the rain Forests that Puerto Rico has to offer along with the islands that surround the main island, the ocean, the Dry Forest, and of course, the caves.  There are 1000's of cave and fragments of older systems in the mogote mountain Karst belt of Puerto Rico with more just waiting to be discovered for the intrepid visitor to the island.  Some of these caves have been developing and collapsing for millions of years in a active solutional dance that the karst topography has been doing with the meandering watercourses.  The Camuy system has one of the largest underground rivers in the world with leads that are still being discovered.  The Rio Encantado system stretches for almost 17km under the rain forest with active caves and sumps that have been hydrologically connected through previous expeditions. 

Millions of years ago, the Rio Camuy use to take a different course down to the ocean along with other river systems like the Tanama river as they would eat away the limestone into valleys and caves until it encountered basalt layers that would stop this erosion from continuing.  This action would work in conjunction with the usual carbonic dissolution process creating some massive trunk passages inside these caves with ceilings over 150ft and stretch almost this equal distance in width.  The geology of Puerto Rico is interesting as it rose out of the South American seas near Patagonia 100's of millions of years ago and shifted through tectonic action to where Puerto Rico is located in the Caribbean today.  

 Puerto Rico has some of the most impressive canyon and cave systems in the Caribbean, so it's no question as to why this beautiful island keeps bringing me back to visit.   The caves house a plethora of life including crickets, boa’s, different species of bats, scorpions, crabs, and the famous whip scorpion called the Guapa. On this trip we got the opportunity to visit 13 caves which ranged from missing pieces of the camuy system to fragments of systems that have otherwise collapsed upon themselves creating their own individual identity from one another.

 I arrive at Pipo’s waiting to hear about how the weather was going to be like for Juan Neives the following day.  Cueva Juan Neives is a very wet cave with raging waterfalls and fast flood potential so after the locals looked up the weather conditions, they did not want us to venture into the cave the following day.  Instead we slept at Pipos and drove over to Loudres which is a bakery and a place where local cavers meet up to visit two other caves in the area, Cueva Golondrina and Cueva Cathedral. 

We got to the bakery a bit early to find out that everyone was going to show up an hour late so we took a nap in the car and woke up when they arrived.  We met up With Julie Dutil, Tom Miller, and Carlos Artiguez. Carlos was running later than the others,  so we ended up going to the first cave to rig and get set up without burning off too much day light. Golondrina was literally down the street and right off the road.  We could see the entrance from the road and I remember driving past this place on previous trips clueless as to what was right off the road, Amazing what is literally right off the road.  Julie had a 300ft rope so we rigged a tensionless anchor to a viney palm tree and set up a re direct on a stalagmite to reduce rope abrasion.

This cave ended up using just about all of Julie’s rope but the pit itself is more of a staged steep walk down with a couple small shear ledges, rather than a straight vertical drop.  I set up the de direct and descended down while laying out the rope as I dropped into the pit.  After passing the mid drop I notice some bags on some kind of cord that looked like they had dead chickens inside of them!! Carlos was previously describing that there were chickens found with their heads cut off and candles at the entrance drop of this pit before, so It was a bit creepy to find this and I pondered voodoo as I bumped into these decaying remains of sacrificial gore, was I was going to be possessed?

 Anyway, I made it down to the bottom and called off rope while I noticed the sun’s rays blasting through into this cave  as the sun was lighting up the whole entrance and reflecting an orange hue . It was beautiful!!!!! 

This cave was also known to have trash at the bottom, so we wanted to survey and document this cave and recommend a cleanup effort be executed to keep this beautiful cave in good shape.   There was broken glass and tires at the bottom but overall it was not as bad as I thought I would be after hearing the stories before entering this cave. 

Trash Bottom of Cueva Golondrina Puerto Rico

 We all helped with the survey effort and eventually ascended out of the cave to go across the street to visit Cueva Cathedral.  These two caves must have connected at one time as they are really close to each other and trend in a similar direction.  
We ran across the street in our muddy caving gear and ran into the forest to start out trek down the saddle of a mogote that leads to a valley and the top of the beautifully decorated pit entrance to Cueva Cathedral.

Vertical Entrance to Cueva Cathedral Puerto Rico

 This cave use to be a commercial cave and people would pay a group to take them into this cave system but for some reason it was shut down and is now vacant.  Down the valley is where Cueva Del Falso Tributario is located and is another cave that we will be visiting in a couple of days, but for now we got to go down into the horizontal entrance of Cueva Cathedral.

Entrance of Cueva Cathedral

The entrance was a pretty impressive one for Puerto Rico Standards as the crickets were chirping and the colors of greens and blues reflected their mossy color that the ancient formations had on the once active solutional limestone.

Entrance of Cueva Cathedral

We continued down the passage and climbed over some boulders to get to another length of passage where we had to walk up a steep breakdown pile of lose rock and mud to the main room in the cave.

Tom Miller, Carlos Artiguez, and Julie Dutil in Cueva Cathedral Puerto Rico

Taino Indian Pictographs in Cueva Cathedral Puerto Rico.

 Julie came out of a decorated room and insisted that I go through knee high mud to view this place, so Carlos and I went back there and we found some very interesting formations. A lot of them looked like they were cut off from the top and the ceiling was filled with soda straws and the floor was decorated with over 100 stalagmites.

Carlos Artiguez in Cueva Cathedral Puerto Rico

Afterwards we started to head out as it was getting darker outside and we wanted to make sure we had some time to beat the crowds from the San Sebastian festival going on down the street from where we were currently at.

Cueva Cathedral Puerto Rico

I got some pics as we came out of the cave passage which was not that long, actually as a matter of fact, a lot of the caves in Puerto Rico seem to be fragments of longer ancient systems so the length of these caves is not as long as the majority of the caves in the states with regard to length but the rooms are quite large and picturesque!  Once we got back to the car, Tom invited us to stay at his place for a few days which was nice of him so we ended up going to his place to set up the tent under his carport which had a nice overlook in the mountains of San Sebastian Puerto Rico.

Julie Dutil in Cueva Cathedral Puerto Rico

 GOLONDRINA FLICKR: https://www.flickr.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/sets/72157649991506368/

CATHEDRAL FLICKR: https://www.flickr.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/sets/72157650406761245/

We gear up and hike for about 30-45 minutes up and around the quarry to make our final B-line to the entrance of Flowing Stone cave.  I have heard that this one was a bit hard to find but I was able to get two separate cords for this one so that worked out quite well and we were able to find it rather quickly.We rigged at 380ft rope on a tree and padded the entrance pretty good since there was a lot of fluted water cut rock formations before the main drop was encountered.  I get on rope and make my way around the pads and over to the main drop of the cave.

The rap is near the wall as I descended down but that did not block the incredible views of the large  active flowstone showering down water  with the slow moving water rings the casually descended the flowstone and a syncopated order. The other semi active flowstones decorated the walls and surrounding area as a continued to descend to the bottom. 

By the time we all made it down to the car, it was nightfall so we headed back to the hotel to sort out our gear and group dynamic so we could prepare for the grand finale, Fantastic Pit in Ellison’s Cave.