ADAM HAYDOCK

El Yunque cloud forest dwarf plants

 So in the middle of the night I heard something running around the tent, we were hundreds of feet up on a ridge and I have never seen any dogs or cats roaming around from the neighborhood below where we were camping at.  So there is something running around and all of a sudden it runs right into the tent and into my foot! I jumped up and grabbed my knife! "What the fuck was that"!?! It wasn't a hard punch into the tent but it was very mysterious to say the least. It might have been a mongoose or an iguana, but I am just sure, and it may never be known what it really was. We woke up early so we could go get ferry boat tickets to Culebra a day early and get to the north district for a hike. I wanted to check out the La Coca trail which is suppose to be a bit more rustic, waterfalls, and the only trail I haven't been on. We get to the trailhead and I noticed a lot of broken car window glass on the ground which is not a good look for me so we decided to summit the mountain via the El Yunque Trail which will take us to the cloud forest.

El Yunque Trail Puerto Rico

 We started up the gravel trail which made it a hell of a lot easier to hike up rather than bushwhacking and slogging our way through plant debris and mud.  We noticed the weather change as it got a bit cooler and the trees started to shrink and get smaller.

El Yunque Cloud Forest Puerto Rico

El Yunque Cloud Forest Puerto Rico

It was a beautiful view as the clouds haven't quite rolled in yet so we had a window of opportunity to see the ocean to the North, East, and South of us.

El Yunque Cloud Forest Puerto Rico

The trees were dwarfed due to overall lack of sunlight and the wind was blowing with consistency which I imagine made these plants grow the strong branches that they have.

El Yunque Cloud forest

El Yunque cloud forest

Eventually, we made our summit to the top of the El Yunque trail and the clouds started to roll in with a hard drizzle of rain that followed. As we were a the top, I was thinking about how we were in a massive water cave with previous world class caves before that, and now we are on top of a cloud forest mountain.  This really put Puerto Rico into perspective for me as to how this island has so much diversity in terms of biology and geology.  I love this island!!

El Yunque cloud forest

We started to make our descent back to the clearing to catch more cloud action blowing past us.

El Yunque cloud forest

We made our descent back to the car enjoying the hike and watching the chance in weather with the plants around us.  Earlier in the day we got our tickets to go to Culebra for a couple days so we were really excited to be changing it up a bit and enjoying some R and R in a remote and beautiful desert island.

FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/sets/72157640085189756/

We noticed the cut banks where water had recently raged through which created a path for us that made it easier to reach the entrance of the cave.  Soon after, I look out to the 500-600 ft cliff face and notice the cliff starting to surround us.  That is when we noticed the entrance to the cave.

It was like a 6 lane highway going into this massive entrance.  This is one of those caves that remind me of some caves that I have read about in Asia, maybe a bit smaller but this one was the biggest cave I have ever been through. 

We kept going deeper into the cave allowing the ambient sunlight to light our way as we crossed over the river taking a mental note of the colors on the wall. Beautiful.

We noticed hundreds of bats flying at the top of the ceiling which was amazing to see but the smell of the fresh guano and the fact that we got shat on multiple times rang my histoplasmosis bell, so we keep moving and stayed in the water where it didn't smell so bad.  We could see the exit from the entrance but it took us 45 minutes just to get to the other side of the cave.  The water got deeper so we started swimming in this river noticing the high ceiling and the active flowstones pouring water around us.  As we got closer to the exit,  there were waterfalls to the side of us which made this place look like a fantasy land  Absolutely breathtaking!!

When we exited the cave, we got to a little rock bank where there was another small cave to swim through with waterfalls pouring over the entrance!!

 This place did not even seem real, It was like a place out of the movie lord of the rings.  The small cave had these waterfalls pouring over and flowstone around it so we starting swimming through and we found the river blocked by logs that prevented us from continuing through.  I attempted to clear the logs but we decided to turn around and climb over the wall through the jungle and come out the other side.  After scaling the wall, we walked down a path that seemed to be where other people walked to avoid that log jam, we were able to walk down a spring that was blasting water which was flowing over to the other side of this small cave system.

 The original entrance was just an amazing site to see and I will never forget how well the sunlight was able to illuminate a good portion of the entrance.

 We also got a chance to see what the locals call "El Radar" which is the largest radio Telescope in the world but from what I understand, the Chinese are about to build a bigger one.  It was easy for this to be built as it is situated in a sinkhole. We grab some dinner on our way to the El Yunque but right about the time we get to the jungle, darkness settled in so setting up the tent and hiking up the 200 ft piece of mountain to get to the ridge was just a bit more interesting but the morning views from the ridge are amazing.



Laura  and Andy at the entrance of Cueva Dos Ojos

 

We make it up the hill and talk to the landowners about what we are going to do. We continued down into the jungle with some indicators to where Dos Ojos was located. After about 45 minutes of mogote hiking we made it to the impressive entrance of Dos Ojos.

 It was more impressive from the inside looking out but I really enjoyed this cave. Once we were able to scramble our way down to the bottom of the entrance, Flora went off to work on her project while Laura, Andy and I went in the other direction. We past impressive old flow stone drapery covered in fine popcorn textures. The ceiling was at least 50ft and the passage provided breakdown and huge flow stone structures to climb around.

 

Soon after we made it to the end of the cave which had some more impressive flow stone drapery formations.

 

Afterwards we turned back and went the other side of the cave where Flora was working. I decided to stay back near the entrance to catch some of the noon sunlight that was shining into the cave, lighting up the formations. 

 

I continued back to see what Flora was working on and there were about to wrap up with what they had going on so I came back out and got some more pics of what was around us and of everyone exiting the cave.

 

We wanted to get over to larga in good time so we packed up and got ready to go.

 

 We continued to orient and re orient ourselves to get to Cueva Larga. Along the way, we passed Cueva Dugon and I was impressed with the entrance this cave had which was situated on a wall of a large sinkhole. Next time I'm coming back here. After a few minor mis orientations, and a strange "monkey" sound,  we found Rolf and the entrance to Larga 

 

Larga had an interesting vine covered formation entrance that you walk in between the formations to get into the cave.

 Than you climb down formations to get to the massive..and I mean massive borehole passage. Tom miller surprised us by making a guest appearance which was nice to hangout with him and talk about some of the cave features and geology. Some of the pics didn't turn out so well and others turned out pretty decent

Rolf was working on some projects so I was able to help him document his work with a few photos for him which I posted on facebook.  I was able to get a pic of Rolf on the other side of a massive breakdown pile that got high carbon dioxide readings and was warmer than where we came from. 

There was a lower level where we went down into after Rolf finished up with his work and I was pretty impressed with the formations that were growing in this section.

We made our exit from the cave shortly after going through knee high sticky mud and sliding down a few mud hills in the cave.  After an educational speech directed by Flora about education, we proceeded out and through the jungle mogote landscape past the landowners house and down to Rolf's car.

No that's not Rolf's car but it was a car on the side of the road.  reminded me of what our rental would have looked like if we flipped the edge of the moss road in Florida Puerto Rico.

 FLICKR DOS OJOS: http://www.flickr.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/sets/72157640092205605/

FLICKR LARGA: http://www.flickr.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/sets/72157640092271195/
 



Formation room Cueva Convento

 Pipo cut a b line trail through a saddle in between two mogotes so we could get to the cave quicker. We went through a dense fern overgrowth section so cutting our way through this with machetes made the descent down the saddle easier. We get to the entrance and there was a crack in the wall where the entrance of the cave is.

We climbed up into this hole and proceeded through a couple rooms with small squeeze entrances that connected to larger rooms. I could hear crickets so I knew we were about break through into large cave passage.

We look to the ceiling and we can see large bats swarming the ceiling air space above us. As we walk into the large rooms the guava scorpion let it's presence be known by running across the walls and stopping for brief pictures here and there. These things are pretty big! The size of the scorpion is about the length of two hands and these fuckers can run pretty fast too!

We continued to walk through these passages to the end of the cave taking pics on the way in and out. It was a freakin sweat box in these large passages, it must have been in the 80's with high humidity. I was sweating my ass off just walking around in these upper rooms.

We exited the cave and made it back to the car just in time for it to rain! Nice, let's add a little insult to shit show of a ride back to the normal one in a half lane roads now shall we.... This was pretty bad but it could have been a lot worse and I have been told that cars like mine have made it out before so I'm locked in commitment and start my way back up this mossy slip and slide road making sure we don't roll into a 200ft ditch below us. We are making good steady speed until I got to the incline, the wheels start to spin, the car locks into anti slip mode and I turn to put the wheels on the dirt to get more traction as we are now inching our way up the road with the wheels throwing dirt. I am making progress as the rain continues to fall making matters worse. I start to slide a bit more and slowly the car breaches the top of the hill making it past the main obstacle. Now we have to go down another hill now, so I slow down and start the descent down the road inching closer to the exit. With the moss, rain, and the decline all working against me, the car starts to fish tail. Pipo takes a deep breath and I can hear Laura's heart skip a beat as I start to slide off the road. I turn the wheel in the opposite direction against the slide a few times and was able to gain control of the rental car once again as we came to the bottom of the hill. We made it to the exit and as the gate was being unlocked I  shouted out "yeeeaaaa"!! "We did it"! I'm not much of a car guy but that was pretty good considering the consequences we could have been facing otherwise. 

We dropped off pipo and went to the beach area where cueva del Indio is located to check out the Taino petroglyphs, the sea arches, and wash off our clothes with a coral reef snorkel swim in the ocean. What an epic day. We  ended up getting a hotel that night to break up the jungle life a bit (after all, this is a vacation) and while we were sitting down eating dinner we heard about a 6.5 earthquake with an epicenter 35 miles from us that happened hours ago. I didn't feel a dam thing or hear anything about. This must have happened when we were sleeping in the tent but thankfully there were no serious injuries, no tsunamis, or aftershocks when we were inside the caves shaking breakdown into our heads. We got rest for the following day into cueva larga and dos ojos