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