ADAM HAYDOCK

This is a beautiful cave system that I have been to a few years back but wanted to come back to and get some awesome pictures from .   We had to park the car is a really shady neighborhood but there were workers at the factory that allowed us to park on the street and they said that our car would be fine since most of the people were working and not home that day.   

We hiked past the hydrologic plant and found the trail to the entrance of the cave which is situated across the tanama river. We swam across and entered the small entrance to Cueva sorbetos.  Carlos and Jorge want to rebuild the entrance door and leave this cave to only be accessible to people that can get a key to unlock the gate.  These people must have experience in conservative cave practices and tread lightly due to all of the delicate and very rare white soda straws that exist in this cave.

We walked down a breakdown pile and got to the main trunk passage.   It is muddy brown, pretty big, and has a stream of sorts running through it.  It would just be another cave with a rotundra room and a large trunk passage room if it wasn’t for the all the soda straws in this cave.  The straws  decorated the walls above our heads and near joints in the rock.  There must have been 10s of thousands of these straw formations and some had flutted indentations and helictite protrusions growing off of them.  

We continued to walk down the passage until we got to a small passage with thicker mud where every inch of the passage was covered in straws above us and to the side of us.  It was like a crystal passage of white teeth shimmering as we passed though this section.  Everything appeared to be held up by pillers of white calcite formations and thin straws. 

Unfortunatly a lot of the straws were broken off in this room so it is unfortunate to see as it became more apparent why Carlos wants to lock this cave up for key access only.  “Wild tours” by tour companies are taken into this cave and they want to regulate it a bit more so the spelunkers do not continue to break the straws.  I cant just blame them for it as I am sure locals and other people come into this cave and may have damaged it in the past but We continued down the passages and We took more breaks and slowed down a bit until we got into the main trunk passage and the remaining part of the cave.



Adam Haydock in Cueva Sorbetos Puerto Rico

We could hear water passing through this section and there was a river to our left where a sump dive was conducted in the past according to some of the local cavers but the reports on their findings are unknown.  I am inclined to believe they didn't find anything as this is a popular cave.

We got a shot from the top down of this passage facing the rotundra room and the end of the cave as well as a shot from the bottom up leading to one of the most amazing crystal rooms I have ever seen.



Cueva Sorbetos Puerto Rico

We continued up the breakdown pile in the rotundra room and admired the massive white formations and the stalictites hanging from the ceiling. They were quite interesting to see as they were some of the largest I have ever witnessed.  We went down and crossed the passage room into the crystal room which should be called the chandelier room due to some of the most intricate white calcite formations I have ever seen.   

There must have been thousands of these straws some ranging more than 2 feet long!

Cueva Sorbetos Puerto Rico

Some of the other formations were stained and embedded with a dirty pink gold tint which gave this room a lot of color and dynamic to what we were looking at.

 Some of the other formations had large helictites growing from the formations which had shades of yellow, pink, and a cream color white.  

Some others were more translucent than others.

It was fascinating to sit here and stare into these crystal formations and look closely into how they formed the way they did. 

After a while, we started our traverse out and passed an area where there was a particular concentration of straws over 2 feet in length and some were reaching the ground.   I took a selfie here but I just can’t take the right selfie without laughing my ass off or making some kind of goofy face! 

Afterwards we snapped a few more photos and made our exit into the remaining hours of the day and washed off in the Tanama river. What a great way to wash off!! 

Hiking back was even nice as we noticed plants that sell for 30 to 50 dollars in Chicago, growing naturally in the forest. 

We made it back to the car and booked another hotel in Arecibo which gave us some time to go to Cueva Del Indio and get a good head start for the following days caving activity to Cueva Perdida.

 

Adam Haydock in Cueva Sorbetos Puerto RIco

 

FLICKR: https://www.flickr.com/photos/exploration-worldwide/sets/72157648083975714/

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/